New 55,000 Euro tonearm

SAT has been around for a while. IMHO it is overrated and overpriced. I ask myself if I had unlimited funds would I buy it? The Answer is absolutely not. I would buy a Dohmann Helix and put two Schroder LTs on it. 

Using only the photos attached to the review, it seems that neither the pivot nor the counterweight lie in the plane of the LP surface. Nor is the CW obviously decoupled from the pivot. Those are all commonly accepted good practices observed by new modern tonearms, although I’ll be the first to admit that there are other great tonearms, especially vintage ones, that also don’t conform to those design criteria..

Dear @mijostyn  : Me neither and @rsf507  as mijostyn posted that design has at least 11 years now so it's " new " for you but no for all of us.

Even there is a dedicated SAT thread in this forum.

Regrads and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,

R.

I don’t know what can be gleaned from the specific design, but, I don’t think the location of the pivot and counterweight is an issue, even from a theoretical perspective.  The supposed “ideal” is neutral balance, which is the center of gravity being in line with the pivot; it is not the case that the pivot or the counterweight or the center of gravity having to be in line with the record surface.  I don’t know of many arms where the pivot is at the height of the record.  Arms where the counterweight is substantially lower than the pivot are common, particularly with unipivot arms, because this is inherently stable.  But stable configurations resist movement away from the stable balance position which means increased tracking force when riding up a warp and decreased force riding down.

I have not heard the arm, but it would have to perform miracles to justify its price, in my opinion.  For someone with much better finances, I can see it being a reasonable purchase with far less of a holy payback.

Quotes from the link:

Gomez's raison d'etre is fierce: "You will never find magic ingredients or bullshit in my designs. I cannot make magic, only the best of what science, technology, and my imagination have to offer today."

&

Gomez firmly believes that pickup arms should be designed and manufactured as precision measuring instruments, not as tuned musical instruments, which is, unfortunately, a common practice today.

My observations on the attitude:

An excessively aggressive approach of bullying and belittling the competition to match the excessive prices he demands.

I have nothing against precision engineering, if anything, it is welcome and a most powerful tool to build audio equipment. However, to build something that is built to SOUND GOOD, and not just to MEASURE GOOD... would require more humility and a little more open mind, and learn from those low-lie music instrument makers.

I do not want to give him free advice, so no comment on what could be improved would he deem to present himself as a decent human being.

HINT: who of those lowly music instrument-copying arm builders tunes his tonearm with so badly OUT OF FRIGGIN TUNE RESONANT FREQUENCIES as this arm?!!!

No more hints, this alone should be more than enough...

BTW the arm is probably a very high level one, but for this money one could do better than feeding peacokcks and roosters.....  I always look at who I am supporting when making a purchase. If you are an unpleasant human being, even with a good product I'm not going to support you. On the bright side he probably sad those things to attract the appropriate clientelle, for whom such attitude is a powerful magnet....