Where can I hear Teres

yep, those redpoint tables are UGLY

I guess that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I recently purchased a Redpoint Testa Rosa and very much like its industrial look. The parts are shined to a high gloss and are very user friendly. I am using a Kuzma Stogi Reference arm and a Shelter 901 (still breaking in). I agree with the above comment regarding the background silence as I really didn't think that a TT could have this low of a noise floor. I am sure that it is hard to fairly judge a TT when you are listening to other peoples systems with unfamiliar components. When I plugged this into my system (Hovland preamp, SF power 3se mono's, and Vienna Acoustic Mahlers) the improvements over my previous VPI setup was significant.

Dmailer - I agree. It is difficult to accurately assess a source component in the context of an unfamiliar system. Perhaps that is the reason why I am still so confused about the the Redpoint/Teres tables. Having read so much positive feedback on these tables, I expected to be floored by the Redpoint regardless of system context, arm or cartridge.

However, the low surface noise was amazing to me... but the owner of the house / Gyro / system, didn't seem all that amazed by it. I asked him if there was less surface noise than his Gyro and he said, "hmmmm.. maybe a little bit, I don't know."

Aren't there enough substantive changes from the Teres to view the Redpoint as a different (albeit, related) animal? The differences in bearing and platter seem to me to be significant enough to warrant this.

It seems from viewing the link that Bwhite was kind enough to provide that Redpoint is more than an attempt to bring Teres to a more retail commercially oriented perspective.

Tom, can you shed any light on this?

I have never seen or heard the Teres first hand. One of the founders of Redpoint was one of the founders of the Teres project and he said that they wanted to expand on what had been done and take it to the next level with Redpoint. I must say the machining done on the spindle and bearing is really something and makes most others look pretty lightweight. They seem to have done alot of experimentation with platter materials which have resulted in more complex and expensive platter options but they feel these options are a sound improvement over acrylic platters. As far as using a battery powered tape drive I have seen no negative side effects since mine has been set up. I suspect that the battery powered tape drive is a good part of the equation regarding the low noise floor.