Eminent Technology ET-2 Tonearm Owners

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.

To new owners of an ET2
NEVER change a cartridge with the pump running.
Else probably risk a fate to your cartridge - similar to trying to walk down slimy, slippery, wood deck steps in the pouring rain in summer – without a handrail.

Frogman: I had the exact same thing happen with my Airtech tank.
Chris: I like to use lint free swabs for maintainence issues, from spindle/manifold/ to TT bearing cleaning.
Also, I use Techspray isopropyl alcohol that's 99.9% pure. Evaporates much faster. All available at Parts Express.

I'm a believer yeah yeah yeaaaaaah, I'm a believer! It's over 15 hours in on the Acutex. My excitement has me reporting back already. Right now, there are two areas my former Dyna set-up surpassed the Acutex. The silences or black background had a sort of erie quality before and the sibilances were handled slightly better. This little cartridge has replaced over $2000.00 worth of equipment, leaving no doubt that it's superior with this arm in a less than optimal set-up. The soundstage really is impressive. I want to say vivid but that might imply too much of something. I'll just say the performers are more "present" without being overimphasized, not beyond the front plane of the speakers. I feel it's more revealing of minute changes in VTA or VTF.

Another tip from downunder - I found plugging the pumps into isolation transformers rather than directly into the mains smoothed the sound out quite a lot even with dual pumps/surge tank etc.