The Wax Engine from Consonance--Anyone heard it?

Over on the Steve Hoffman Forums, someone posted their new turntable, called the Wax Engine: http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/wax-turntable.511240/

This is the website for it: http://www.opera-consonance.com/products/analog/LP6.3.htm

Looks like it's from a Chinese company. In the SHF thread, someone linked to a blog where the author was claiming the Wax beats the pants off Regas and VPIs costing $2-$3k. However, I noticed this blog was linked to a dealer, so I'm a bit skeptical.

Still, for $1k it may be worth looking into. I was wondering if anyone has heard it or heard anything about it.

 

These are ~$740 without shipping according to taobao.
But with such design it better has a good price/performance ratio.

 

That design...woof. Looks like an minimalist anorexic Pro-ject RPM turntable.

I am newer to understanding what influences a turntables sound, but it challenges everything I thought what a good turntable should have; this has low mass, small coupled motor, small feet (even the pic looks unstable) etc. I would think there is a reason that 90% of turntables share a similar design, because its been proven to what works best.

But again, maybe it sounds pretty good and I am placing too much weight on the visual aspects and preconceived notions of what a table should look like. Don't know much about the comparisons in terms of which carts were used, etc. But if I was choosing where to put my hard earned money, I would find a safer bet.

 

I had a consonance dac that sounded verey good for its price point. Nice tube analog stage, problem is it had transport issues within the first year.

 

- I don't like that the arm is just hung off the end of the triangle made by the feet. I'm not sure why any designer would intentionally create a lever like that in a low mass design.
- The steel chassis probably rings like a bell
- The platter appears to be a puny piece of acrylic. I have no idea about the quality of the bearing... I'm going to assume the worst.
- The AC (I assume) motor looks nearly undamped and it's sitting in a metal tube which is going to vibrate...

That's just the table..

Now for the arm:
- How do you adjust azimuth with that arm? (maybe the first ring which looks like it has a set screw you can rotate... but then whyyyyy have two)
- The headshell appears to not be slotted which means either the collet is detachable and you can modify the length there or you are completely fucked for adjusting overhang/pivot to spindle because the arm is fixed mount
- The super long flat finger lift (looks at least 1.5") on the headshell looks ripe for mishandling and it also looks big enough to actually act as a lever...

In short it really looks like about $30 worth of generic china manufactured parts being sold for $1000. I dislike being "that guy" and trashing something I haven't heard but there is a lot going on here that to me is screaming "we have no idea what the f**k we are doing" or "we designed this table to be as cheap as possible but look cool". It's entirely possible that despite all of the above it actually sounds good though the way the arm is designed it seems nearly impossible to setup properly...