@whart Because I am a dog.
As long as you can adjust the effective mass, a dogmatic tonearm will run any cartridge at it's best. There is no magic to tonearm design only compromises. The pivoted offset arm makes one huge compromise for the sake of simplicity and that is it is not tangential. Most of us think that is a reasonable compromise to make given the state or the art in tangential tonearm design with three possible exceptions the REED 5A, 5T and the Schroder LT.
@lewm The Rabco was a frigin haunted house!
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A good tonearm will not have any sound of it's own. It will limit discrepancies so as to minimize distortion into inaudibility.
In dealing with the imperfect world of records. A tonearm must be designed in a certain way and have specific features to function at the state of the art. The SAT tonearm does not qualify. it is nothing more than a substitute for a "mighty sword" (Randy Newman). A tonearm should have no sound of it's own.
Given the problems with tangential arms, which theoretically would be best, a pivoted offset arm is still the staple of tonearm design. It should have ridged bearings of the lowest friction without any play. It should have a ridged, non resonant wand with a fixed head shell and continuous wiring clips to phono stage termination. Short arms are superior because of their lower inertia and superior tracking abilities.
The arm should have neutral balance as opposed to stable balance. This is easy to see. You should be able to draw a straight line through the center of mass of the counter balance weight through the vertical bearing on through the center of mass of the cartridge and head shell. This usually means that the counter balance will be dropped. If you adjust the counterweight so the arm floats horizontally a neutral balance arm will stay at whatever elevation you place it. A stable balance arm will oscillate until it finds horizontal again. A neutral balance arm maintains the same tracking force regardless of elevation. A stable balance arm decreases tracking force with elevation.
An anti skate mechanism is mandatory of the lowest friction possible. Magnetic mechanisms are best.
Appropriate mechanisms must be present to adjust the orientation of the cartridge in all planes. Once locked they should be perfectly rigid. This disqualifies most VTA towers. People who insist on them need to find themselves a good hobby like cooking or basket weaving.
From an aesthetic view tonearm cables should exit beneath the tonearm board. They interfere less with suspensions and dust covers this way aside from looking much better. People who need to show off their wires need a sports car they can polish. A proper system should have all of it's cabling hidden as best as possible. This business with fat cables and fancy sheaths is again for men with undersized mighty swords.
The Schroder CB is an example of such an arm.
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Thanks @rauliruegas Mr Tonearm gd. Every one trait that falls off represents a compromise. Compromises are frequently worth it. That is a judgement call.
@drbond , It is not how a tonearm sounds, it is how it works. The difference in sound quality is so slight as to be made meaningless and subject to psychological overlay. Mis tracking distortion is terrible sounding. How well does an arm prevent that from happening with any given cartridge?
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@drbond You misunderstand me. A tonearm can not improve sound quality. it can only degrade it. The difference in sound quality can be rather large between an excellent arm and a not so excellent arm due to degradation. But, between two well designed arms the differences in sonic quality are as I stated.
@billstevenson The Rabco? The one we had in the shop did not know which direction to go:-))) You bet! Unipivots are a low cost, lazy solution to tonearm design and violate what is perhaps the main principle in tonearm design, holding the cartridge rigidly in position over the record with only two degrees of freedom. I worked in retail during the same time period!
@asvjerry Not so simple. Most of them are examples of the tail wagging the dog.
@tomic601 I think a lot of audiophiles are waving something else.
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@lewm The problem with the weight on a string AS mechanisms is that records are hardly ever perfectly concentric. Now the cantilever has to over come the stiction. I recall the old days with a V15 in an SME 3009. I use to watch the cantilever wag back and forth on eccentric records. If I defeated the AS the wagging stopped and the cantilever deflected towards the right channel. You can't win. You envision magnetic AS correctly. In the case of the Schroder CB one magnet is fixed to the horizontal bearing and the other on an adjusting screw. The neodymium magnets have opposite poles facing each other so they attract. When you study the geometry of the situation, the distance at the pivot really does not change that much as the tonearm travels over the record's playing surface. If the AS is set at the center of the playing surface, so the variation to either side is only a few mm at the magnets, well within neodymium range. Yes, there is a slight variation across the record, the AS force dropping as the arm travels across the record. AS is a ball park situation and the CB's AS stays well within the ball park and I have measured this with the Wallyskater which can be adjusted to measure the AS anywhere on the record. It changes less than 1%, probably less than the pivoted style AS mechanisms like the Kuzma.
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@tomic601 my wife tells me I'm 1000% dog. I started painting my nose black back in 95 to get more attention. Growing a tail helped.
@asvjerry See, that tonearm has warped your brain. I had that H-K turntable and it warped mine. Tail wagging the dog. There you go, best use of a Rabco, as a car bomb.
@billstevenson I can't imagine rewiring an arm would bother you that much.
@whart The Koetsu works reasonably well in the Airline because of it's very low compliance. The air bearing does absolutely nothing to alleviate the high horizontal mass, that would be magic.
Frank Kuzma does one of everything to suite all comers or just to say he can. His unipivots are just as bad or as good as anyone's and the same holds true of the Airline. He can not even make his mind up on what kind of turntable to build, so he builds one of everything.
@pindac Removable head shells are for lazy people. It adds another set of contacts which is never a good idea. I like the Kuzma/Schroder solution which is a removable cartridge carrier without another set of contacts.
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@tomic601 Panzerwood? That stuff is ugly as h-ll. Send me a template and I will make you a handsome one out of Rosewood or Ebony. Both are extremely dense having a specific gravity almost as high as water. I laminate it with 1/16" thick aluminum plate. You can drill and tap holes for screws.
@lewm Did you forget that I am a dog. I have respect for the fact that you were brave enough to try it. I tried the Transcriptor's Vestigial Arm. Looking back on it, that was more stupid than brave.
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@rauliruegas I would like to emphasize your point on having a reference.
When tuning a HiFi system you have to have some idea of where you are going. You have to have a reference. You have to know what is possible with the very best systems, which is why listening to serious high end systems is so important even if you can not spend that kind of money. Never say you can't get that kind of sound out of a less expensive system. People would be surprised how close they can get with careful equipment choice, attention to detail and good room management.
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@pindac The Blackbird is a brilliant design. I think calling it a sideways unipivot is somewhat derogatory. It is a braced pendulum bearing pivoting on a horizontal thrust bearing. The mechanism is not obvious looking at the arm and it is hard to explain in words. I am not fond of the string finger lift. I prefer the old fashioned kind. Otherwise I see no reason why it should not be a grand performer. It is ugly as h-ll, but that would not stop me.
@drbond I have a reasonable amount of experience with the Saphir and none with the SAT. Neither tonearm interests me in the least. I do not think either arm offers anything over arms that cost significantly less and are even better designs. Yes, a lot of people are impressed with these arms and I would say they are being swayed by expectation bias. I'm still waiting for Dohmann to put a vacuum plater on the Helix, but had I one I would put either a Reed 5T, a Schroder LT or both on it. They offer the benefit of extremely low tracking error and no skating with similar effective mass in both directions. This is more than enough to separate them from the pack including both the SAT and Kuzma arms.
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@drbond Theory?? No tracking angle error and very little if any skating force? Those are huge benefits, not that you can ignore other aspects of tonearm design. Schroder and Reed arms are otherwise well designed and built with only very minor quibbles. I have no doubt both will handily outperform any offset pivoted arm including the SAT and Saphir. I would and will bet my own money on that. IMHO the only reasons that the SAT and Saphir sound so good is the looks and the price. The Mark Levinson Rules of Audio Performance. In order to sound good a unit has to look sharp and cost a fortune.
@pindac Panzerholtz attractive? Fancy plywood? There is so much beauty in nature and natural wood that is every bit as functional as panzer holtz. The only problem is these woods like Ebony, Cocobolo, Lignam Vitae and other rosewoods are expensive a h-ll. If you want constrained layer construction it is child's play to throw an aluminum layer in there. Panzerholtz, yuk!
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@rauliruegas Who said anything about a huge difference? I seem the recall specifying at the beginning of this thread that the sonic difference between these arm is extremely minor. I said, "It is not how it sounds it is how it works." I'm sure you would agree that some arms work better than others. IMHO it is not improved tracking error that is the major benefit it is the fact that these arms are not offset, no skating. You can never stop skating with an offset arm you can only minimize it and there is a lot of disagreement in how that should be done. Perhaps this is why people like their Viv arms. Then again, the best arm made it the one I own at any give moment. Everything I stated before is not theory, It is all common physics and geometry.
@drbond Absolutely, All that matters. I can buy the very best bearing for $10.00. The very best carbon fiber bicycle frame costs $6000. The wheels with ceramic bearings cost $2500. The Helix, and you know how much I respect that table, might have $8000 worth of materials. The prices of luxury audio are falsely elevated because there are people who will pay for it. It is how these little companies stay alive, maybe. There is always equipment mid pack that will perform sonically just as well if not even better. The JC 1 amplifiers were a great example. When they came out a lot of jaws dropped three feet.
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@drbond There is some wisdom here if you listen close enough. None of us can compare every tonearm and there is no dealer that can compare every tonearm. Frankly, never trust a human who isw trying to sell you something. But many of us have owned just about every type of tonearm out there and that adds up to a lot of experience. But, what a sound system or any piece of equipment sounds like when it comes down to the best equipment in a speaker/room that you like is more likely to be due to the relative humidity than anything. How a piece of equipment performs is a funtion of design and the factors that make a great design are accessible to anyone although some manufacturers may try to hide them. You have one of the very best turntables and one of the very best phono stages. All of the best arms and cartridges are going to sound similar, to normal people indentical. I have three top of the line cartridges and what amazes me more than anything is they sound way more alike than not. There was a day when the differences between cartidges semmed to be much greater.
@rauliruegas , your experience with linear tracking arms matches mine. I only made the mistake myself once. There is no current line tracker that I would come close to considering. The Reed 5T and the Schroder LT are very differnt animals, they are pivoted tangential trackers and though there are some minor quibbles I do not see why they would not be excellent arms and perhaps even a step forward. Had I a turntable that would fit one I would have a Schroder LT already.
And by the way, when you are dealing with a 12 kHz waveform in the grove of a 33 1/3 RPM record, 1.4 degrees is a lot with modern stylus profiles that have a very narrow contact patch. But, as I said before I thing the real benefit is in no skating.
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@drbond I think you and I have different versions of "dramatic." The 5A is a cool arm. It is not one I would try. I think the Schroder LT is a more elegant solution to problem. I know you mentioned someone having a problem with one on a Helix. I have been over the instruction and mounting manual. It is way more complicated than most arms. I have also been toying with the Reed 5T. It is an insanely cool arm and way more of a conversation piece than any other tangential arm. I would have to disembowel my Sota, ditch the plinth, beef up the suspension to handle the load and build a new plinth around it all. Child's play.
@lewm Zenith is rather easy to measure under the microscope. The programs used with high end USB microscopes will measure anything including zenith. You "snap lines" on the legs of the angles and the computer calculates the angle. For Zenith you would snap a line including the two contact patches the another parallel to the cantilever. It should be 90 degrees. You correct zenith by twisting the cartridge in the headshell, but it is a compromise. If I got a cartridge that was not 90 degrees I would send it back as defective. All the working elements of the cartridge need to be exact and bilaterally symmetrical to get the best performance.
@pindac Give me a break! You are just as compulsive as any of us.
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@jollytinker You noticed a difference between cartridge arm combinations., not tonearms. The MSL would have sounded better in the 4 Point and much the same as it sounded in the Saphir with perhaps better bas due to the Saphirs very high EF. As you discovered, many cartridges will not be comfortable in the Saphir. Add a little mass to the 4 Point and you will get the same results. Add mass to any good arm and you will get the same results.
@terry9 I love being "someone else."
This is one point I disagree with Peter on who I have the utmost respect for. You adjust azimuth by eye. I use to use a mirror, now I use the Smartractor which has a dandy magnifier. The stylus has to be perfectly upright in the groove. The sonic difference between +- a few degrees is essentially inaudible but with some stylus profiles +- a few degrees might accelerate both stylus and record wear. Examples would be the replicant 100, GygerS and Soundsmith MR. The stylus used by both Lyra and MSL is more forgiving. The Soundsmith OCL Stylus also fits in the later group.
@pindac Ouch! That is way to serious for an audio discussion. This is not a Dis-Ease. It is a fun hobby for people who love music. If it makes up your sole purpose in life that would be unfortunate. Right now I am going back to making my wife's master bathroom vanity. In the shop I listen to 4 old Mirage speakers powered by Adcom and digital streaming. Since I have to wear hearing protection for the machines the volume is always turned hysterically high. I guarantee I am the noisiest person you have ever met.
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@jollytinker Yes, actually. It was a MSL Platinum signature on a Saphir mounted on a CS Port turntable and the 4 point was on a Kuzma R. Now, this was at a friend's house and he feels the Saphir sounded better. He's a lot more impressionable than I am. Anybody can make a fat tonearm wand out of synthetic sapphire. I want to see one made out of boron.
@lewm You and I absolutely agree to a T on azimuth. I line the diamond up at 90 degrees and forget about it. Done that for 55 some odd years. Fozgometer my backside. As an aside (@terry9 might like this). I was listening to a cartridge I had owned for about 6 months, a Corina Round album, Tigermending, I was thinking that the album's production was not as good as I had thought it was when I started to hear mistracking. I got up immediately expecting to see a wad of dust or something strangling the stylus. Nothing, clean as a whistle, but the stylus looked funny. I got out my magnifier and a flashlight to have a look. Let's say in the normal record playing position a stylus is pointed at 6 oclk. Looking from the front this one was pointed at 8 oclk. Otherwize the stylus and cantilever looked perfectly normal. The cantilever had rotated in the suspension, somebody forgot the cement I guess. I took a picture of it under the microscope and sent it to the company. They immediately sent me a new cartridge and a shipping label for the old one. The thing is, I seriously doubt that stylus rotated abruptly. It slowly shifted under the various forces at play until it got to the point I noticed it, about 60 degrees off axis. The system sounded much better when I put another cartridge in, but that was an abrupt change. The stylus shifting slowly was not. It happen so slowly I did not notice. However, it is important to note that the cartridge's internals were all in proper alignment with the record and it was still getting a stereo signal up until it misstracked and that is when the shoulder of the stylus hits the groove wall. The stylus was a modern fine line of the type used by Lyra and My Sonic Lab. It has a more rounded tip and the fine line continues a ways up each side. If anyone thinks they can hear a stylus (I did not say cartridge) a few degrees off vertical they have much better hearing than I. My stylus gets an easy 40 degrees.
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@jollytinker I think you are just as impressionable as my friend. Both those turntables were on isolation stands and are extremely similar. It is much more important to be able to quickly switch between setups to AB correctly and it is also important for you to be blinded. It is highly unusual for anyone to have two of exactly the same turntables, although you could mount both arms on either turntable. Any good turntable is not going to "sound" at all. If you have a turntable that changes the sound I suggest you throw it away. It is so bad I would not foist it on anyone else. The cartridge arm combination may sound different and if so that is usually in the bass. A lot of times improper setup causes differences. If I had the equipment at home I would make high resolution digital copies of both setups playing the same record. This makes it very easy to switch back and forth to compare and my wife makes a great switcher. I always blind myself.
Listen to @rauliruegas. He is absolutely correct, the Saphir is way too heavy for most cartridges. It impresses the heck out of unsuspecting audiophiles because of the price and cache of a sapphire arm tube. Same deal with the SAT arms, the Mark Levinson effect. Neither tonearm is on my radar. If I were going to spend silly money on an arm it would be for a Reed 5T.
What @lewm means is, experience is the best teacher with one exception, that would be mistakes.
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@pindac is a gentleman of the old school, the classics. I am a chimney sweep.
Analyzing the design aspects of mechanical objects will usually reveal the best design for functionality on paper depending on execution. It is not how a tonearm sounds, it is how it works.
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@pindac Yup you missed something. I have repeatedly said that a good tonearm should not alter the sound in any way. Now, if you were going from a bad arm to a good one there may be an obvious change in the sound from colored with distortion to neutral with less distortion. All great arms sound the same although depending on effective mass might alter the bass a little depending on the cartridge compliance. There is one challenge left in tonearm design that might move state of the art a little and that is a linear tracker that maintains all the necessary parameters of tonearm performance and moves the arm across the record. noiselessly and accurately. All the arms that have tried to do this like the Rabco did not have the right technology available to them. That tech is available now and I am trying to get the right people interested.
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@pindac I would not buy a SAT arm if it cost $5000.00. It is a bad design. The vertical bearing should be down at record level and it is a stable balance arm, not neutral balance. A tonearm shaft taper is nice but it does not have to be that fat. The size of the SME V is fine. From a technical standpoint the SME V is a better arm. But it is too old and inexpensive to be any good. The press really drives this effect.
My next arm will be either the Schroder LT or the Reed 5T. Whichever arm I get I will do so without an audition. If there is an issue with either arm I will deal with it.
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@terry9 Those files are rigged. I know the Atlas SL real well. I am listening to one as we speak playing Alice in Chains, "Dirt." @lewm is correct, "something is broken." I might also add that Mr Fremer suffers from severe presbycusis according to people who know him well. You might notice that he has a tendency to talk really loudly, a sure sign.
I have a calibrated instrument that I use to measure and adjust my system. I highly recommend it.
@drbond I think that description best fits mahgister. @pindac is into string theory. His speakers are so efficient he wires them with string, Egyption cotton sounds best
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