HW responded on Facebook and said they've been too busy with everything else.

I tried that, it just got the ring hot but didn't affect the adhesive much. 😂

Yes, but it's not old adhesive, it's the tape itself stuck to the ring with a layer of fuzz atop it. Imagine taking a regular fuzz foam strip of the type that goes on the ring, removing the fuzz until it's 1/32" thick and leaving that. Reason being, with the new strips the adhesive between the tape and the ring is stronger than that of the fuzz to the tape, so when you peel it up the fuzz comes off but the tape has to be pried off the ring millimeter by millimeter. I'm not exaggerating when I say it took over six hours to get one half of one felt strip off the ring so I could replace it, and I gave up doing the other three. 😄

Sounds like it was addressed on the Avenger Direct, thanks.

Listen when it starts the platter rotating; it ramps up in pitch so is arguably more audible if you can't hear it while the platter is in motion. Alternatively, see if you notice it going away when you hit the stop button.

I love my Adona rack. https://www.adonacorporation.com/zerogxt.html

A lot depends on your room. I often have no other sounds in the room when I listen - no appliances, no HVAC, no traffic sounds, nothing. I'm also sensitive to higher frequency sounds (meaning they've always bothered me.) As I've said, I've heard it on every HW-40 except the ones at shows because there was too much ambient noise at shows. If the AD/TD are silent, that's a good sign and I look forward to someday hearing one so I can verify.

I've given consideration to the Avenger Direct in the past but sadly no dealer near me carries one so I'd need to hop on a plane to use/hear one if I didn't want to leave a dealer stuck with one as a return if I didn't like it. Other than the usual if you tap your fingers on the plinth while playing a record it comes out the speakers issue common to all VPI models I've tried it on, my main issue with the HW-40 is that (apparently) ~10 KHz noise any time the motor is running. Thanks!

https://tmraudio.com

Do they do the same in the Avenger/Titan Direct or did they decide on a different method for those?

At the end of sides you can hear it from across the room. I think Phoenix Engineering has the answer here; you can hear it ramp up when you start the platter turning and it remains constant while it is on and goes away when it is shut off. I've heard it on every HW-40 I've heard in a non-show context (shows are often quite noisy with the three rooms down the hall playing No Sanctuary Here. 😉)