Comparison of sonic qualities of some tonearms

So my guess would be that no tonearm has no sound of its own, OR the question is impossible to determine. This is based on my experiences with 5 different tonearms all in use for several years and heard with a myriad combination of cartridges. Limiting the generalization to tonearms that are generally recognized to be of good quality to begin with.

Mijo, you are very consistent in maintaining that a tonearm should have no sound of its own, but what does that mean? Since we can’t know how a TA sounds without a cartridge. And different TAs with different cartridges can sound very different.

Agreed. Or, to put it differently, saying that "a tonearm should have no sound of its own" is in logic terms a tautological contradiction. A tonearm can not be evaluated without a cartridge mounted and playing a record. You now have vibrations going from the record into and onto the cantilever and then into and onto the tonearm. Sympathetic resonances are impossible to eliminate entirely no matter the design, material, and damping.

Vinyl replay is the inverse of loudspeaker transducers. And like loudspeakers, you can go to heroic lengths to eliminate enclosure vibration but the drivers installed in that inert enclosure still vibrate and distort when driven and in the process of doing so the floor and room react to the vibrations as well. This is analogous to what is at play with cartridges and tonearms. You have to face reality and "play the room" by which I mean an ideal tonearm for a given cartridge compliments the cartridge in a euphonic manner.

To put it even more simply, we listen in homes, not laboratories.

To "compare" arms, one needs a 2/3 arm setup with similar cart, plugged into multi input phonostage-both arms on LP playing.

Now you can start talkin...

If there's someone who actually does that, I'm envious you have the time/resources for such an activity.

This disqualifies most VTA towers. People who insist on them need to find themselves a good hobby like cooking or basket weaving.

Either/Or reasoning, common among true believers and propagandists, is a rhetorical fallacy that undermines the force of any argument in which it appears. Reductio ad absurdum is likewise unconvincing.