Eminent Technology ET-2 Tonearm Owners

Oilmanmojo, Daniel thanks for chiming in here with your experiences.

Daniel –

I modified mine quite a lot and tweaked it to what I think are the limits of it's design.

I already posted the thread link to your table from 1993. Do you happen to have the picture with the ET-2 on it :^) by chance. Some eye candy for us. Can you at least tell us if you replaced the I-Beam and what brand of wire you preferred.

Frogman – I was not aware of multiple I-beams and those mods with the springs. My ET-2 arms were both bought used and came with just one I Beam each. One of them was a high pressure manifold. The other one I sent to Bruce to replace to the high pressure one.

Cheers Chris

Slaw, I will post a picture of my ET on my TNT6 next time my son comes over with his digital camera; being a bit of a Luddite, I don't own one.

No, no relation to R Vandersteen. Curious, why do you ask?

Ct, look closely at the leaf spring on your I beam. Is it a single spring, or are there two spring glued together for lower compliance?

Dear Chris,
I preferred the IKEDA silver litz - here in particular because it features extremely soft Teflon-foil insulation - resulting in extremely low reset force.
Very important IMHO with an air bearing tangential tonearm.
Besides that mechanical advantage it sounds very open and has become my tonearm inner wiring of choice due to some other mechanical advantages as well as no sonic shortcomings whatsoever.
I used the high pressure manifold as soon as it became available.
Furthermore I used a very large surge tank to smooth air flow.
Compressor was the old venerable Jun-air "Troll".
Still in my experience, the ET 2/2.5 developed problems at 19-22 psi and higher.
Extremely important too, to bring surface of platter AND ET2/2.5 in perfect level - but that's mandatory anyway .. ;-) ...
Cheers,
D.

From the ET2 manual:

*****It is desirable in most cases (low to medium compliance cartridges 5x10 dynes/cm-10x20 dynes/cm) to use the minimum number of counterweights, far out on the counterweight stem. This decreases the horizontal inertia of the tonearm while increasing the vertical inertia....
....the weights should end up close to the end of the I-beam*****

Speaking of the manual, I have not seen a better or more informative manual with any other piece of equipment that I have owned.

Hi Frogman - both my I-Beams have a single spring in them.
Thank you for the wire info Daniel.
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I havent figured out how to convert a bitmap to text. Need to download some program. Quicker to type it out :^(
Adjusting the Arms Mass.
From the manual page 9

Adjustable effective mass

The effective mass of the tonearm is adjustable both vertically and horizontally. The arm has low-medium mass vertically and medium to high mass horizontally. Four counterweights allow the vertical/horizontal mass to be changed. For example: if the user decreases the amount of counterweights used ,and moved this position back (higher on the scale number) the horizontal inertia of the tonearm would go down and the vertical inertia would go up.

Decoupled Counterweights

The effective mass of the arm horizontally is equal to to the sum of its component parts (It does not pivot) it needs to be as light as possible for low mass, however, making the arm too light sacrifices rigidity.

DOES MOVING THE WEIGHT OUT NOT MAKE IT LESS RIGID – A NO NO for this type of arm)

By decoupling the counterweight system horizontally, but not vertically, the mass is of the counterweight is not seen by the cartridge above a certain frequency.
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Now what I am hearing.
See first sentence under decoupled counterweights again.
IT NEEDS TO BE AS LIGHT AS POSSIBLE FOR LOW MASS, HOWEVER, MAKING THE ARM TOO LIGHT SACRIFICES RIGIDITY.

In my system when I replaced the counterweight bolt with a longer one and added a “little” more weight closer to the spindle there was noticeable bass change and overall presentation. I made the arm I believe more rigid by doing this. You can hear it in the sound. Based on the music you listen to and more importantly "the cartridge" you may prefer this or not. How much weight you add is a variable. The extreme limiter is bottoming of the spindle - but you will "hear" sonic problems “rumble” long before that according to Bruce - I have so far added just a bit more lead with no issues. I am not done with this yet.

I have discussed this with Bruce and he told me as the manual says that by doing this I am increasing the horizontal inertia but also he said that I am “increasing the vertical weight”.

VERY IMPORTANT

Don’t try this until you have figured out how to properly setup the arm. Level platter/level Spindle/Cartridge setup properly..
Bruce also told me that the effect will be different by cartridge/compliance. So I cannot say that you will get more or less bass attack or solid/leaner overall sound by doing this because -I don’t know what cartridge you are using and the compliance. I am basing what I am hearing on two test Empire 4000DIII MM cartridges 30 x 10(-6)cm/dyne that were mounted on an ET-2 and ET 2.5 at 19 PSI that I did my comparisons with in 2011.
This is a mod I feel u need to try for your own system/room / music preference because it costs nothing to do. Bolt was .75 cents. Lead weights are free from auto shops or order some from Bruce.
Cheers