Some tables have soul and some not

I can confirm the Final Labs Parthenon was reviewed by TAS, first by Harry Pearson and then by Warwick Mickell who was a TAS writer based in Japan. I own the unit reviewed by Warwick, a personal friend. Unfortunately HP insisted on putting a high mass turnable onto an unstable air platform, against the designers advice and although HP liked the tt he commented on the bloated upper base. It is still more advanced than most heavy mass tt's built today and the Micros & Melcos. The motor controller includes reconstructed power supply sine and cosine waves, to provide stability for the motor controller/motor, the ability to adjust the torque applied to the thread drive and precise independent 10 turn potentiometers to dial in 33 & 45.
In my experience both the high mass turntables and the top direct drives, the L07D and Technics SP10mk3, got poor reviews due primarily to poor set up and incompatibilities with tonearms of the day. Many of the tonearms in those days had resonances and required careful matching to the tt and armboards of the day.

Lewm: " I do think he (Art Dudley) is a fine writer, in contrast to many."

Yes, I agree and he's a delight to read. It's just a shame that such usually open-minded writer has such blindness towards one genre of products without even looking into their inner workings before dismissing them. Sometimes you just have to look for the "soul" of a turntable.

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The thing is getting really annoying

http://www.monoandstereo.com/2012/01/interview-with-simon-yorke.html

I know, I like and respect him so far, but if he continue like this (about DD) he is going to miss much more than a few fans.

Q: I know you strive for complete solutions, but have you ever thought about direct drive?

A: Yes, and after thinking about it I moved on. Bad idea, connecting your (microphonic) record directly to the shaft of a vibrating motor, no?

I, too, like and respect Simon Yorke but rather disappointed about the above. Another bewildering thing is his answer to the below:

Q: XLR vs RCA? Is balanced phono output a better one?

A: "XLR is a three-pin, centre-balanced transmission system. I’ve never encountered a cartridge with 3 pins per channel, have you? So, what are you going to do with that third pin on your chunky XLR plug? Taking a ‘balanced’ approach to a phono input is a good thing, but adopting the professional line-level transmission protocol (XLR) to do it is, in my opinion, mostly just playing games... marketing."

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Balanced isn't only 3-pin. It could also be 5-pin stereo-balanced.
If the phonostage is fully balanced(recall Violectrik), you can rewire tonearm for 5-pin stereo-balanced transmission. So aside from marketing, our cartridges/arms are balanced by default having +&- pins for each channel + Ground.