Top 5 Tonearms Newer or Vintage Under 2500 That Will Beat anything above/below 2.5k?


From all your tonearm experiences trials errors comparisons etc is there a Top 5 tonearm list that are known for their musical superlatives in all music ranges and genres? including finer detail nuances feeling, 3d sound but also deep bass and midbass, basspunch. Airy highs. And importantly long hours listening without fatigue.
The criteria also to be met are easy setups for all angles vta vfa azimuth anti skating etc 
The Tonearm must also the ability to use more than just one or two cartridge compatibility.

Probable Turntables to be Used: Garrard 301/401, Lenco, Linn, Thorens 124, Technics 1100 1200 10 or 15. 

Heres the list i compiled of ToneArms to pick from.
Feel free to mention others.

  • Tw Raven, D Talea, Graham 2.2/phantom, Moerch, Origin Live, Vpi, 
  • AudioMods

  • Clear Audio, Stax, Rega, Technics 500/1000, Sumiko, Alphason, Black Widow, One unipivot, Saec, Clear Audio, Basis Vector, Triplanar

  • Origin Silver, Rega 9, Linn Ittok, Project, Technics 500/1000,
  •  Alphason, Audio Technica, Dynavector 507

    Grace, Mission, Grado, Ortofon, EMT, Thorens Tp,
  • ESL, Sme 3012, Sme 3009, Sme V, IV,

  • Schroeder, Kuzma, Eminent, Ikeda, Breuer, 
    Stax, Kenwood 007 arm, Sonys top Arm, Artemis
vinny55
Used ET II.  It has VTA adjust on the fly and choice of three different arm tubes for quick swap of about any cartridge.

Chakstr you must have misspoken when you wrote that the FR64 is best suited to light, high compliance cartridge s.

to who ever wrote that silver was not made for audio, are you serious with that line of thought? Copper and silver are both conductors of electricity. Period.

meantime, what happened to the OP's question ? 

Everybody knows Van den Hul, some know Van den Dungen

(Kiseki + Prima Luna) but who is familiar with the 3th Dutch

''grand master'' Eddy Driessen? Certainly worth mentioning

by ''vintage tonearms'' . The problem is: if you need to ask for

the price you are not suitable as his customer. His trade mark is

''Pluto'' while all his TT''s and tonearms are hand made by him.

@lewm 

Chakster you must have misspoken when you wrote that the FR64 is best suited to light, high compliance cartridges.

Can't find anything about it in this thread, but anyway the FR-64FX is not like the FR-64s. So what i said earlier somewhere is that FR-64FX (Black Color) has a bit lighter effective moving mass compared to FR-64s superheavy monster. The FR-64FX can be used for heavy FR-7f or SPU cartridges and that's why i bought my FR-64FX.

Actually even with the small counterweight the heavy MC cart like FR-7 can be balanced and used as i can see in the internet, but it's probably wrong as the counterweight is to far from the pivot. The right conterweight for heavy carts (up to 32g) is FR W-250, on this picture you can see both (the bigger is W-250).   

This arm was developed in the 80s, later than FR-64s. FR-7f black cartridge (and FR-7fz) also developed later than silver color FR-7. So i believe the FR-7f supposed to be used with 64-FX tonearm (they are both black). 

But it shouldn't be a problem to use lighter carts with 64FX tonearm if the owners got additional (smaller) counterweights. So the FR-64FX is more versatile tonearm than his older brother FR-64s.