Vintage DD turntables. Are we living dangerously?

Lewm/Pryso

thanks for your concern. but the tech has no concerns about exploding caps or his ability to fix if any fail, even thou there are NO technical manuals available so he will be going somewhat blind again.

This is the same tech that fixed my P10 and Halcro's DD's, making his on IC on the P10 so he is more competent than most - There was nothing wrong with the caps in the P10 either.

The P3 was serviced by Pioneer Japan before I bought it a few years back.

I actually slipped a disc in my back trying to move the P3 into the car, so off the radar for some time now. Does not mean I won't do it in the future, but anything this old can fail at any time.

The prime cause is related to the fact that nearly all tonearms are mounted such that the stylus overhangs the spindle.

Thanks for reminding me of this Lew...😊
I do think that in this case with his specially made 20" tonearm without an off-set headshell.....he probably also set it up on his pod without any overhang⁉️
I can't imagine what geometry he would use if he DID set up an overhang as he couldn't get zenith correct at the two nulls without twisting the cartridge...❓😎

Halcro, Lew,
A straight arm with no offset is normally set to one null point a little inside of the center of the recorded part of the record. I think this would correspond to 96 - 98mm from the spindle.

There is an arm like that now called Viv Rigid Float. It has won some accolades. I've never heard it. "They" say the benefit is from eliminating most torsional forces on the cantilever.
Regards,

http://stereotimes.com/post/viv-lab-rigid-tonearm

Fleib, another such arm that preceded the Rigid Float is the RS Labs RS-A1. As you say, it uses "under-hang" and thus achieves tangency at one point on the LP surface. Both of these arms are in the realm of the crazy, but I can say that the RS-A1 really works and sounds way better than I would have guessed. Thus I am curious about the Rigid Float. What bothers me about it is the question of whether the pivot is really held "Rigid" by the floating bearing arrangement. I don't see how it could be. The instructions that come with the RS-A1 suggest 21 mm of underhang is optimal (stylus hits the LP 21mm short of reaching the spindle) but this is more a suggestion than a rule.

Halcro, I agree that a 20-inch arm with a straight head shell would have very little tracking error because of its sheer length, and the skating force would be weaker than in most cases. But the trade-off is the potential for lack of rigidity of an arm that long, plus high effective mass. Interesting for sure, nevertheless.

Lew,
You mean 21mm short of the lead-out groove, which would be about 80mm from the spindle?

Reducing torsional affects on the cantilever is extremely important and obviously a tradeoff for alignment error. The Viv arm won a couple product of the year type awards so it might be very good?

I believe the pivot is held in place with some kind of magnetic fluid.
http://www.highend-electronics.com/viv-labs.html

Regards,