Jrw40:Now that this thread has beat tonearm design theory to death without answering your question, I'll make a stab at it.
what is the reason a company ,such as denon for instance to put an "S" shaped tonearm on there table. ive had both straight and S . and while not high end , i currently have the denon dp500m table . ive heard nor seen an advantage to either, though my experience is very much amature audiophile.
The two main turntables (that I can think of) that are using an S-shaped arm are the Denon 500M and the Technics SL12x0 variants. I can think of several reasons they might do this.
* We've already established that to use a detachable Universal headshell on a 9" tonearm, there has to be a bend in it for better tracking angle. This means the wand will be a J or S shape.
* In Japan, the home market for these manufacturers, the S-shaped tonearm and universal headshell are both still popular. E.g., Audio Technica still makes a J-shaped tonearm with detachable headshell for $1900. It's at AudioCubes II here. The detachable headshell thing is popular enough over there that ZYX offers a universal headshell at about $550. See it here.
Technics and Denon have probably determined that offering a manual turntable with detachable headshell still has market viability. Being able to use a tonearm design from the '70s on a direct drive transport enables them to maintain a presence in the turntable market, offer higher build quality for a lower purchase price, and avoid R&D expenses on a market that currently can't generate the numbers they require to invest in new R&D.
