Ledoux, Panzerholz is a trade name for an exotic German plywood: half millimetre slices of beech hardwood embedded in a matrix of phenolic resin. It’s dead, dead, dead.
I built the wand out of blocks of 3/4" thick ply, epoxied together to form a stick, then shaped. Actually, I had that done for me because you need carbide tools and/or the kind of skill that comes from daily practice to shape the stuff without making a mess. The pivot was made from a 0.375" bar of Nickel Silver, and the screws were Vic’s nylon.
My Koetsu is the Rosewood Signature Platinum with diamond cantilever. Another thread discussing K’s leads to the conclusion that the diamond cantilever is the last big jump in the K line, not the stone bodies, which are fine, but relatively less important.
The Tomahawk wand is good, but wasn’t made for a 12g cartridge. It needs weights and damping material hanging off it, it looks plain messy. Also, on some recordings there appears to be some distortion which won’t go away, so I thought I’d try changing the wand. That’s not intended as a criticism of the Terminator, I still think that it’s the best deal in high end - just that I want the performance of a 70,000 Euro SAT.
I’m also going to try a more exotic captured bearing design, which should allow very fine adjustments to be made easily. That’s in the future, but I’m having some parts fabricated now.
Wish me luck!
I built the wand out of blocks of 3/4" thick ply, epoxied together to form a stick, then shaped. Actually, I had that done for me because you need carbide tools and/or the kind of skill that comes from daily practice to shape the stuff without making a mess. The pivot was made from a 0.375" bar of Nickel Silver, and the screws were Vic’s nylon.
My Koetsu is the Rosewood Signature Platinum with diamond cantilever. Another thread discussing K’s leads to the conclusion that the diamond cantilever is the last big jump in the K line, not the stone bodies, which are fine, but relatively less important.
The Tomahawk wand is good, but wasn’t made for a 12g cartridge. It needs weights and damping material hanging off it, it looks plain messy. Also, on some recordings there appears to be some distortion which won’t go away, so I thought I’d try changing the wand. That’s not intended as a criticism of the Terminator, I still think that it’s the best deal in high end - just that I want the performance of a 70,000 Euro SAT.
I’m also going to try a more exotic captured bearing design, which should allow very fine adjustments to be made easily. That’s in the future, but I’m having some parts fabricated now.
Wish me luck!