J_Damon, based on the many reports we’ve seen here from purchasers of the ART-9 it would seem that while there have been a few isolated cases of misoriented cantilevers the odds are heavily in your favor that a replacement would not have that problem.
Regarding compatibility with the associated equipment you mentioned, I have no knowledge of the technical characteristics of the arm on the VPI Super Scoutmaster. But I would point out that the relevant technical specs on your ARC PH-6 are identical to those of Oregonpapa’s PH-8. And as you’ve most likely seen his results with the cartridge have been fabulous. The only conceivable technical issue I can envision is that in the very unlikely situation where the combination of preamp gain, power amp gain, and speaker sensitivity is unusually low the 58 db of gain provided by the PH-6 (and PH-8) might on some recordings result in having to turn the volume control on the preamp so high that you would risk running out of range. Or if preamp gain and power amp sensitivity are both very low (meaning that power amp sensitivity is numerically high) you might not be able to turn the volume control high enough to drive the amp to full power, should you ever want to do so. But those issues would only arise in system configurations that are unusual, and if you’ve already used some other LOMC in the system you would almost certainly have noticed any such issue already.
Good luck. Regards,
-- Al
P.S: Frank (Oregonpapa), thanks very much for the nice words in your last post.
