Thales Simplicity tonearm review in Stereophile.


Michael Fremer's review of the Thales Simplicity tonearm in this January's Stereophile is pretty brutal. Are there any owners of this tonearm that would take except to his conclusions?
sarcher30
I haven't read the review, nor have I heard the Thales arm. But, I do note that Mr. Fremer has certain views about design that essentially preclude even reviewing certain products. For example, because he thinks that suspended tables, at least in theory, swing under the varying tension from the belt drive, he will not review Basis turntables.

As to the issue of difference in horizontal and vertical masses, there is always a huge difference with designs like tangential tracking arms (much higher horizontal mass). Some arm manufacturers of conventional arms actually deliberately design arms with much higher horizontal mass for the reasons given by Lewm, above. The Moerch Anisotropic arm is another example.

I applaud reviewers, like Mr. Fremer, who will actually stick their neck out and do a critical review, and I think it is fair to speculate on a mechanical/theoretical reason why a particular design did not, in the reviewer's opinion, deliver the goods. But, my own experience is that there are all kinds of radically different designs and each can deliver both good and bad results so I would never, ab initio, dismiss something because of a particular design.
I agree with him in suspended turntables, I took some meditions from an Avid Volvere and they was horrible

Regards
I've heard the arm, own the arm and the TTT-C. Fremer was understandably annoyed that he totalled his Lyra, but really, if you turn the mounting tool upside down without the cartridge being secured by screws you'd have to be living on the space station if you didn't expect it to drop to the floor. Having said that, my arm moves freely, tracks brilliantly, is dynamic and has no trace o the inner groove distortion that I heard on my Kuzma Stogi Reference and with a 4 Point, that's why I bought it.
Apparently the US agent 'adjusted' every arm that he received and the bearings were then malfunctioning.
01-12-14: Proftournesol: "Apparently the US agent 'adjusted' every arm that he received and the bearings were then malfunctioning."
I wonder if this is the case in a review from a French magazine as the headshell is installed completely wrong; it's reversed! The funny part is that it got a glowing review!* That's just unbelievable! I wonder if their local distributor re-installed the headshell mounting plate and had it backward!

Check out the pictures:

Page 1 - - - - - - Page 2 - - - - - - Page 3 - - - - - - Page 4

If the sonic impression was based on the performance of the arm in the pictures, it would've had ton of tracking errors and distortions.

* (I don't read French but used Google Translate to get the gist of the review.)

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Yes, the French review photo has the headshell mounted back to front! Maybe it's better for playing records backwards and deciphering hidden lyrics?