Eminent Technology ET-2 Tonearm Owners

Had stiffer bracket that joins armtube to bearing tube manufactured
Replaced wire with van den hul silver - hello radio campus ( rf )
Replaced wire with copper litz from Sumiko tonearm box, hung below pivot and soldered directly into MIT cable approx 2' behind the bearing tube in the centre of the range of movement
Placed small cupboard door magnet under bearing tube - this provides electromagnetic dampening on eccentric records.

Hi Dover – I’d love to see a picture of the set up, wiring, magnet and remanufactured bracket. Is there any chance of posting or linking a pic ? You can’t leave us hanging like that. How long have you had your ET-2 ?

Ketchup – I had a look at your setup. You have done some really interesting stuff too in your system. You have gone in front of the manifold with the wiring. You were considering some new medical wire ? .003" in diameter with .001" thick teflon insulation. Do you have the details on it ?

Here is some general information.

All the ET-2 arms say "Eminent Technology Tonearm 2" regardless if they are ET 2.0 or 2.5 versions.

If anyone has a regular ET 2.0 you can get Bruce to upgrade it to a high pressure manifold to be able to use it at a higher pressure and its doesn’t cost a lot to do this. It doesn’t have to be a ET 2.5 to use the higher pressure.
Both mine are high pressure manifolds and use the same Timeter Aridyne 3000 medical pump at 19 psi.

So as upgrades go consider:

1) there are two spindle versions 2.0 and the 2.5 the later being visually larger in diameter – about 5/8 inch in diameter for 2.0 versus about 6/8 inch for the 2.5. Sorry could not find the tape measure with millimeters this morning.

2) Two manifolds – a) the original ET 2.0 that you see mostly being sold used now. Again this manifold can be changed over to a high pressure manifold and b) the newer larger manifold that goes with the 2.5 spindle which only comes in one version. You can still however run it at lower pressure if you don’t have space/facilities to run it with higher PSI.

In discussions with Bruce here is some info I got from him. REMEMBER THIS IS JUST A GUIDELINE.

Based on the cartridges you are using consider the smaller diameter ET 2.0 spindle resonates at 5-6 hz. The larger ET 2.5 spindle resonates at 3-4 hz.

Aluminum armtube – good all around performance.

Carbon Fibre armtube– Lower Compliance MM’s and medium MC’s

Magnesium armtube – Lowest Compliance MC’s

Again the above is just a guide.

WIRING

I really like the wiring on my ET 2.0/high pressure manifold. It is black teflon coated braided wire. It came with the arm when I bought it used. But for the life of me I haven’t been able to figure out the brand or if its still available.

My ET 2.5 is using Cardas wiring and although it sounds great, I don’t like the wire itself for this arm. I have been moving the arm between my direct drive, idler and thread drive tables comparing the sounds of them. It bends and curls too easy and it is not pliable enough for me. I will be replacing it and the reason I asked my question initially.

ET 2.5 wiring - Cardas 33 awg

Cheers Chris

I recently took advantage of the .5 upgrade I had Bruce perform years ago by adding a compressor, and like Chris am running 19 psi. The results were eye-opening. I also made a DIY cable and am using my own routing scheme that has taken all of the pressure/force on the cantilever out of the equation. I'm using the latest Discovery wire. It is a heavier guage, but in the way I've constructed/routed it, everything is all good. I hope the pictures I'm posting will come through.

Slaw,

Your pictures came through. Looks good! You mentioned on your system page that you also did a cantilever bolt modification. What exactly is that?

Ketchup,

I thank Chris for putting me on to this. Adding some more weight onto the bolt so the weights can therefore be moved in closer to the spindle. ( It doesn't take much, I used the smallest brass weight provided with the tonearm and tightened it all up with the stock threaded adapter) Ideally you should add another lead weight. Maybe Chris will chime in here to help me out. He's much better with the technical reasons than I am.
The end result was a slight increase in transparency across the frequency range and cleaner, clearer more musical bass.

Ketchup – I had a look at your setup. You have done some really interesting stuff too in your system. You have gone in front of the manifold with the wiring. You were considering some new medical wire ? .003" in diameter with .001" thick teflon insulation. Do you have the details on it?

Chris,

I don't know exactly what wire I'm using right now as it came with my tonearm, but I think it's some kind of van den Hul wire. It's solid core, silver in color, with clear insulation that might be Teflon. The wire enters a tube that I added to my arm wand immediately behind the cartridge pins. From there, it loops over the platter and enters a Teflon tube that runs to my phono preamp. A copper braided shield covers the Teflon tube between the end of the "loop" and the phono preamp. The copper braid is grounded at the preamp. The four individual wires are separated from each other where they are exposed in the loop. This arrangement had the least effect on tonearm movement. The tonearm leads are soldered directly to the Lundahl step up transformers in my phono preamp. No RCA connectors are used. I should take a better photo of the wiring to show exactly what's going on.

As you mentioned, I would like to try some smaller diameter silver wire with even thinner insulation. Phoenix Wire has a lot of wire that would probably work for us. I doubt Teflon insulation over 0.001" is necessary, but I'm only guessing. I wonder what minimum gauge wire can we get away with using in this application.

Phoenix Wire claims that no order is too small, but if there's a price break for larger quantities, I'd be interested in going in on an order with some of you guys if we can all agree on the wire specs.