Eminent Technology ET-2 Tonearm Owners

Hi Slaw, tuneful bass indeed. The Acutex on the ET makes the most realistic bass that I have ever gotten with my setup. Not just powerful (a lot of cartridges do that), the bass moves with the same rhythmic impetus as the rest of the frequency range; essential for music to "make sense". A truism among musicians is that things always start from the bottom up. Again, not the quantity of bass, but the clarity of the musical contribution of the bass "voices". Get that right, and a lot of things fall into place.

The soundstage will open up as the cartridge settles. When you say you have the "body" paralell to the LP, I hope you mean the top mounting plate and not the "nose" of the cartridge. After the cartridge settles in (takes quite a while) try increasing VTF .1-.3 grams, while at the same time raising the back of the ET a bit. Increasing the tracking force will lower VTA.

Also check the amount of torque used on all the ET adjustment bolts. A subtle effect, but I have found that if the bolts are too tight the sound is not as open and opulent as it can be. It's even easy to over tighten the bolt that secures the end cap that holds the leaf spring to the extent that the spindle tube can be squeezed and become misshapen, adversely affecting the sound.

Dover: That's true, plus the 1/2 m cable I used.

Frogman: Yes, I'm referring to the top of the mounting plate. After around 6 hours in, I'm noticing the soundstage being better integrated however sibilance has become an issue. Kind of spitty, or sizzle. I can assume that when I'm able to get optimum set-up this issue will resolve itself and the qualities that now seem very good will become even better. Thanks for the additional tips.

Frogman - that was one point I was going to mention that has not been covered, the tightening of the 4 bolts on the manifold. I tried one bolt tighter than the rest to get a single point ground effect, but ultimately came to the same conclusion as you, evenly and not too tight.
Re the cabling, my ultimate set up had the armwire running straight from the wand to a teflon block on the side of the tt plinth midway along the arm travel, ie centered. But I also turned my preamp sideways and backed it up to the deck so I only needed 6" of cable from tt to pre. I simply soldered the arm wire straight into the phono cable. The whole loom was probably not much more than 14". For some customers I would install phono inputs on the side of the preamp, if the phono was situated on the left, so they could put the preamp next to the tt and run super short looms. In my own instance 6" of raw MIT cable beats 1m of MIT Oracle ( and probably any other phono cable out there ) easily in this application. The best wire I found was a silk ofc litz, preferred to stock, Vdh silver & cardas.

Dover, I would think that the changes in the sound caused by varying the amount of torque are due to ensuing changes in the resonance characteristics of the arm. Regards.

To any owners of linear air bearing arms that use significant psi to work.

We were born with two hands. I don’t know about the others here but one of my hands is more sensitive than the other to touch and feel. I am right handed but my left hand is more sensitive.

Turn on your setup and take your more sensitive hand if you have one, and hold the air tube going into your arm with your thumb and index finger - a few inches from where it enters. Do you feel any pulsations, vibrations at all ? If you do your air delivery is not optimized and you are not hearing what your arm can do.
Likewise if when placing your ear anywhere near the ET2 tonearm you should not hear any air escaping.