Tonearms longer than 12 inches

Dear hwsworkshop: Obviously is your privilege to agree or disagree and always is easy to disagree when we don't need to say why. Nothing wrong with that, is each one privilege to do it.

For many years I had the idea that longest tonearms always sounds the better. I learned this mainly from japanese tonearm builders. So I bought some of the best japanese long tonearms and " die for it " against whom tell anything against it.
All that learning process was reinforced by the " nderground " audio magazine reviewers that swered for those long tonearms.

Through my very long learning process " suddenly " I learned that those statements on the long tonearm quality high performance levels ( against the shorter ones. ) was ( IMHO. ) totally wrong ( as many other audio " myths ". ).

How my mind changed about?. First I developed a repetitive and almost bullet proff evaluation/comparison process and through the time I learned what to looking for in that evaluation/comparison process of almost any audio item and of course making time to time check-ups to always have my audio system fine-tunned. I learned to identify real musical information  and the added ( every kind. ) listening distortions.
Second, I was and am having constant training through that evaluation process not only in my system ( " thousands of tests. ) but in other dozens of  different audio systems.

Things are that after I " learned " ( I'm still learning. ) I made several comparisons in my system with the same " everything " ( including cartridge. ) with all my long tonearms against each one shorter brother.
I made the deep and very hard evaluation between my MS MAX 282 and the MAX 237 and I did it too with my Audiocraft tonearm with its long arm wand and its shorter counterpart and too with my SAEC tonearms against SAEC short ones ( btw, i remember why decided to buy the SAEC's over the MS, because I bought first the SAEC's, that's was because a japanese report said theat in Japan people likes SAEC over MS tonearms because the SAEC were more " alive " that the MS " dark " sound. Years later when I learn on the whole subject that " alive " was not better quality performance but just higher SAEC distortions. ) and I did it too with Grace tonearms and other tonearms and in all deep evaluations the short arms gaves ( to my ears knowledge levels. ) me better quality performance with more clear and precise musical information and lower distortions where the longest arms always put tiny veils/bluring ( if you know what to look for. ) on the LP performance.

Of course that all what I learned about can be totally wrong but some of the gentlemans that I know personally in USA where I was listening to his great audio systems can attest what level of that " wrong " I have. Some of them are real TEA and Agoner's too.

All of us are accustomed to different kind of distortions and that's what we like it with out take in count not only the kind of those distortions but its very high levels and the problem is that many of us can't discern about and think that what we are listening is musical information. Far away from that.

Good that for you the alignment issue is no problem because for me and the 99% of the normal people always is a problem. Many of us when make changes on VTA we just do that with out any other change that we have to do it. When the VTA/SRA change we have to re-align to met the effective length on the cartridge/tonearm set up and check that offset angle, same when we make VTF changes: everything change.
Sometimes I think that I can't live any more with my analog be-loved hobby and runnaway to digital but I'm a music lover so I stay here learning everyday to improve my daily music enjoyment.


Regards and enjoy the music,
R.

so....Raul and Harry seem to agree n'es pas?

Geoffrey Owens offers his Helius arms in 9", 10", and 12" versions. He feels 10" is the best compromise, and is the length he recommends.