$800 Cartridge Shootout and Upgrade Path

Hi Chris!

Nice post. I've been under the weather so to speak. And I have been doing a lot of thinking about my priorities in regards to vinyl. Tomorrow, I will post some of my thoughts and respond to what you have written.

Artar1

Glad you've found nirvana.

Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks.

Maybe someday, you'll hear the Sistrum, and understand why I said what I did.

Hey Chris,

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving!

It’s been awhile since I have written anything in regards to this thread. It could be burnout or it could be health issues. Well, whatever the case, I’m back.

I am glad to hear that you have gotten something out of the posts that have been made here; I know I have. A little over a month ago all I had was 20-year-old experience with turntables, which was hopelessly out of date. Sure, I have read a number of Stereophile analog reviews, especially Michael Fremer’s Analog Corner, but that’s no substitution for extended direct experience with the best turntables currently being made. Wouldn’t it be great if we could have any turntable we desired setup in our listening room for comparison with any number of other potential candidates? Such a situation would make turntable hunting far easier than the purely theoretical approach with which I am currently saddled.

>>I am going back to college to work towards my Doctorate in Philosophy. I have a BA in Liberal Arts (Philosophy and Mathematics) and have decided to leave software alone and get back to things I really love, reading books and discussing them with others. I have written on art and music in the past and would like to do so in a more academic setting.<<

Your future college and career goals sound great to me. At one time I had aspirations to become a clinical psychologist. It was a grand and noble idea, but one that was too difficult for me to bring into fruition. The profession itself is quite demanding; requiring one to possess nearly endless empathy and having it at the ready was more than I could handle. It was all too easy for me to be utterly caught up with the difficulties of others for which there seems to be no end. Then there was the long course of study and the even longer internship requirement of 3,000 clinical hours after the Ph.D. matriculation, another major stumbling block indeed. So I played it safe by pursuing a wonderful, but now rapidly vanishing career in technical writing.

I loved your reference to tonearm philosophy, for that’s exactly what it is! It’s really a question of deciding whose tonearm design appeals to you the most and then purchasing that “audio experiment,” as it were, for it truly is an experiment, a work in process. When you buy a Schroder tonearm, for example, you are buying a work of art, the living aspiration of a gifted craftsman, which can transform your system into a cutting-edge facsimile of the real thing. But then there’s Triplanar, and what about Graham Engineering or SME? I don’t have that kind of money so the answer will always be a fanciful one.

I don’t know whether a Schroder arm is any more difficult than any of the other high-end tonearms on the market, but one thing is certain, any arm that you set up yourself will be more demanding than using the integrated arm that comes with something like a Techniques SL1200. If you have the proper tools and a good set of instructions, I am sure you will be able to determine proper cartridge overhang, tracking force, VTA, and azimuth. My only concern is the reliability of the “thread” used in the Schroder arm. What is its tensile strength, what is it made of, and how does it affect curing? These are the types of questions that seem to pose themselves naturally. First-hand knowledge, of course, should answer all of them.

Your alluding to “getting off the merry-go-round” is a good one, something I’m trying to do, but at a less expensive level. I think you realize by now that the drumbeat of perpetual upgrading keeps high-end audio manufacturers and dealers alike very happy (and should I also say very profitable) while the rest of us struggle to scrounge up the capital to pay for ever spiraling high-end audio costs. I can’t think of any other industry, besides medicine, in which prices are constantly rising much faster than inflation. After my system is complete, I won’t be buying any new hardware unless a component breaks and it can’t be fixed.

By the way, how much is the Grand Prix Audio Monaco stand? Did you ever consider Billy Bags? What about something from Salamander? Is that stuff too “low-Fi?”

And I have another question: what is wrong with your Oracle turntable? Isn’t it a fairly decent deck? Do you think getting another table will make a big enough difference to justify the cost? Maybe another way of putting it might be this: have you identified a weakness with your current table that you know you can ameliorated by the purchase of another turntable? If not, your purchase may simply sound different but not better.

Good luck to you on your Colorado trip.

Enjoy!

Doug,

Your statement below probably best summarizes my main reservations about buying a Schroder other than price of course:

"It does have a certain delicacy that takes getting used to. There's no finger lift or armtube lock! It's not an arm for the fumble-fingered or careless. The arm itself is robust enough but cantilevers are not. Since the arm is not locked when sitting on the armrest, I'd keep the stylus guard on at all times. That's about the only risk I could see."

What you have written here is more to what I was trying to say earlier. Thanks for the clarification.

Hi to everyone,
It seems there are a few questions regarding the durability of the thread in my arms and then some regarding the perceived "fragility" in day to day use.
The thread is made out of an Aramid type material, comprised of several hundred individual fibres for a thread of 0.3mm diameter. It has a tensile strength of nearly 50pounds and is extremely resistant against abrasives and most chemicals. It doesn´t deteriorate when being subjected to normal levels of UV light. Should it break, I will replace it for free(it happened once during shipping and the only other incident involved a parrot...)
A finger lift can easily be added to the headshell mounting plate(they do vibrate, no matter what)
The arm has no armwand locking feature because it doesn´t need one normally. Once you move the armwand too far past the runout groove, it isn´t falling from the "edge of the world" ;-) ; aka the lift bank, since the counterweight will then touch the arm´s base(behind the bearing, right hand side), preventing it from moving or being moved any further. Properly adjusted, the bearing block(rotate it) will serve as a "stopper".
A locking mechanism could be added if that makes you feel safer(personally, I don`t like the looks of it...).

A great weekend to ya all,

Frank(manufacturer with no intention to solicit sales...)