The arm is working out fantastic. My digital camera is due back tommorrow so i will change out the pics on my system to show some details on the arm and zlift. The whole arm assembly i feel will compete with any arm combination out there for stiffness, ease of adjustment and sonics. I must admit piedpiper was right about the wiring inthat the 0.008 is just too stiff so I will try once again with the superfine wire. With the stock wire, the movement is ok but the sonics with the silver wire i think are better particularly with resolution of the high frequencies. I have always been impressed with the maplenoll when it came to bass response(very solid compared to my michell gyro) but the carbon fiber arm with the clamp system i am using has been a noticable improvement. The post clamp that connects the carbon fiber wand to the air bearing spindle is so much stiffer than you can get with the stock maplenoll arm even with superglueing the connections. I might be off, but i think that is probably the big improvement in the bass response as well as lower distortion on some albums. The zlift also is so sweet because it has allowed me to determine for each type of record, very precise settings to ensure vta is optimized. It has a scale that I can quickly move to as I change records of varying thickness. I still have not hooked up the dampening trough so i do not know if that will improve the sound but from my previous experience with the maplenoll stock arm, the bass became a lot more solid. I will report back once i get it installed. Since i have installed the new arm assembly, i am finding the optimum vta is lower than the stock arm while using the dampening trough (ie the tail of the cartridge is lower now). I am still experimenting with vta and vtf but so far, i think the tweak has been a tremendous improvement. Again the biggest improvement is an even more solid bass response, lower distortion on some of my "difficult albums" and a little wider and deeper soundstage. I also have leveled and balanced the lead platter and recoating with acrylic paint. I have noticed the wobble on the platter to improve but I think the teflon bushing has a little free play thus allowing a little wobble. It is not impacting the sound as best as I can tell but I will look to change the bushing once i find out i suitable replacement. I do have some of the stock carbon fiber tube left (enough to make at least two more arms) if you are interesting in it. Again, if you want i can send the material list for the clamp, and zlift also. I found the total cost of the upgrade including the silver wire was less than 200 dollars.
