Linear tracking tonearms.....

lewm, the TT2 does put a mechanical lateral stress on the cantilever. i have tried carts at extreme ends of the compliance spectrum. the stiffer cart tracks consistently. i had a VDH colibri XGP, which has a compliance int the 30's if i remember correctly. the cantilever was being skewed so much that it scared the crap out of me. i thought it was going to snap off. i ust the clearaudio insider ref on it now. there's little to no lateral movement of the cantilever. a koetsue rosewood signature performed similarly.
the lateral transport tube is noisy. i have it wrapped in blue-tac. i will be replacing the bearings with teflon bearings in the next few months. the resonation comes from the metal bearings moving the quartz tube. seems to be an obvious design flaw to me.

If only these linear tracking arms looked beautiful on a turntable.....?
Sigh.....
The Schroeder LT however......yum :-)

As someone who is very fortunate to have had the Schroeder LT arm in my system now for about 7 weeks, I can attest to its elegantly simple good looks. But more importantly, it has worked flawlessly since I have had it and its sonic performance is as advertised.

Doug, you are quite correct about the dynamics with the Schroeder LT arm - they are explosive and the arm has startling good bass punch and impact.

Arnie

Arnie,

Thanks for confirming my supposition. It seemed self-evident from the differences between Schroeder's traditional bearing and the bearings on the LT, but an ears-on report is always best.

Another advantage is that with the old bearing, arm height would vary slightly as the arm arced across the record. This in turn affected VTA, VTF and overhang. That won't happen on the LT.

Enjoy!

I've got a Thales Simplicity, a parallel tracker not a linear tracker. It tracks brilliantly, much better than my Kuzma Stogi Refence, itself no mean tracker, with fantastic dynamics, great soundstage and a very low noise floor. No inner groove distortion. Advantages are same as linear trackers but with a conventional 9" arm footprint and no need for pumps. Quite simple to set up too.

No sign of the strange experiences Fremer had on what much have been a damaged Simplicity in his Stereophile review.