Eminent Technology ET-2 Tonearm Owners

Frogman - that was one point I was going to mention that has not been covered, the tightening of the 4 bolts on the manifold. I tried one bolt tighter than the rest to get a single point ground effect, but ultimately came to the same conclusion as you, evenly and not too tight.
Re the cabling, my ultimate set up had the armwire running straight from the wand to a teflon block on the side of the tt plinth midway along the arm travel, ie centered. But I also turned my preamp sideways and backed it up to the deck so I only needed 6" of cable from tt to pre. I simply soldered the arm wire straight into the phono cable. The whole loom was probably not much more than 14". For some customers I would install phono inputs on the side of the preamp, if the phono was situated on the left, so they could put the preamp next to the tt and run super short looms. In my own instance 6" of raw MIT cable beats 1m of MIT Oracle ( and probably any other phono cable out there ) easily in this application. The best wire I found was a silk ofc litz, preferred to stock, Vdh silver & cardas.

Dover, I would think that the changes in the sound caused by varying the amount of torque are due to ensuing changes in the resonance characteristics of the arm. Regards.

To any owners of linear air bearing arms that use significant psi to work.

We were born with two hands. I don’t know about the others here but one of my hands is more sensitive than the other to touch and feel. I am right handed but my left hand is more sensitive.

Turn on your setup and take your more sensitive hand if you have one, and hold the air tube going into your arm with your thumb and index finger - a few inches from where it enters. Do you feel any pulsations, vibrations at all ? If you do your air delivery is not optimized and you are not hearing what your arm can do.
Likewise if when placing your ear anywhere near the ET2 tonearm you should not hear any air escaping.

Great tips Chris, and I couldn't agree more. When I started using higher pressure pumps a few years ago my Airtech surge tank literally exploded; in spite of the tank having a safety valve. The safety valve would not kick in until about 21 psi, and since my preferred psi target was 19 psi, things were generally fine. But the tank was apparently getting stressed, until it finally gave out. I constructed a new surge tank using a 6 ft length of 8" diameter PVC pipe with end caps, and used the fittings, valve, and filling from the Airtech. It works great and shows no sign of stress due to the higher pressure. Since I keep the tank/pump and regulator in the basement directly below my listening room, the tank's size is not an issue. The difference in sound with and without the use of the surge tank is very audible.

I remember around 5 years back something happened to the evaporator in my pump. I didn’t know right away. What clued me in was checking the 2nd pressure gauge/regulator that is near the arm. It is also the backup system – remember I am in the business of disaster recovery planning.

The bulb in this picture
http://cgim.audiogon.com/i/vs/i/f/1301961480.jpg

Had filled halfway with water. I thought to myself WTF is going on here? What if all this water got into the capilliaries of the manifold?

It turned out that the moisture exhaust tube in the pump – its outlet was dirty/blocked and it had backed up filled with water and was sending all moisture down the tube to the 2nd regulator/filter. A little CLR on the metal outlet fixed the problem.

WARNING to New Owners and OLD.

Do not buy a used ET2 from someone that has not been using a proper moisture filter. Unless your willing to spend an afternoon and do the simple cleaning procedure (documented in the manual) of scrubbing the capilliaries. I did this for fun with my first ET2 9 years ago. Its like giving your ET2 new lungs. Page 42. Pipe cleaner and isopropol. If you are having problems running your HP ET2 arm at a higher psi. Your capilliaries need to be cleaned. Look here first. Do the procedure.

Frogman - A few more of these type of posts should be enough to scare away the poseurs from wanting this tonearm. Good thing Bruce did not use shiny silver and gold parts or we would have a real problem.