Eminent Technology ET-2 Tonearm Owners

Chris: I fully agree with you. This was the easiest way to get the Acutex up and running. My cartidge clips aren't bendable so my thought is most likely either another wire loom or surgery to my present one. Not sure when I'll get around to it.

The arm is ready to go out of the box and requires no additional "fitting" by moving the spindle by the customer. That would be a poor design.

Kevin - Have you ever come across any analog product that did not require additional fitting or adjustment ? All conversations I have had with Bruce have pretty much been a reflection of what is in the manual already. For this subject see pages 39-40 for the answers . When I got back my 2nd ET2 arm as a 2.5 I can remember a couple of times the arm started skipping on me, like it was binding. The pump pressure seemed ok. Sliding the spindle up and down a couple of times without pressure seemed to help my setup. It never did it again.

As far as good and poor designs are concerned.

IMO – A worst case scenario with an ET2 tonearm is if someone has totally neglected this tonearm after 20 years and actually allowed buildup to occur on the spindle – Now you can take a knife to it and scrap it off, and then clean it with alcohol again. Read pages 39 – 40 in the manual. And bring it back to operating condition. This to me represents not a poor, good or great but brilliant design. The tonearm will never wear out – it’s a lifetime of use.

In another case – take a person that loves their TT with a soft suspension that has microscopic movements. This person would say the ET2 is a bad design for this table. I would agree. So you can have good and bad designs for every application. If someone was praising an analog component as the "next best thing" "perfect design" - to me it can never be perfect because the medium is faulty. No two records are alike.

I am amazed we can get good sound at all ? That’s probably what keeps me intrigued with it. The disbelief.

When are you going to get your ET2 up and running again?

Chris: Your comment about this hobby having alot to do with resonant behavior got me thinking of some reasons the Acutex may be more suitable with the ET. Setup at proper overhang, the armwand is slid (back) fairly far within it's adjustment range, therefore to me it seems that gives the armwand increased structural ridgitity thereby reducing resonances. Of course, I have limited experience with cartridges compared to most of you.

Just to say one more thing about listening to the Acutex... I'm enjoying listening more than I have in some time. The album sides seem to be over with before I know it. To me, this is probably due to the "ease of presentation" provided by this cartridge and the totally relaxed feeling I get while listening.

The weekends... I got it!
I have around 21 hours on the Acutex. Still loving it. I'm becoming one with this transducer and therefore am more aware of what's going on now, that it's becoming of age.
Starting to get slightly annoying in the mid to upper, mid-range. Not really any other issue, well, a little sibilance.
I know exactly what's going on , because I've experienced it in my system and other's, with different cartridges.
If you look back at my intitial posts, you'll see that one of two caveats I mentioned in setting this cartridge up with my current wire loom was not having the center spindle height close to the lp surface. This, as explained in the manual, is very important. I know from personal experience that this will cause the very issue I'm currently experiencing with the Acutex. Annoying in the mid to upper, mid-range, also it can result in splashy treble. Fixing my cartridge clips so I can ultimately lower the armwand assembly at the same time as acheiving top of cartridge being parallel with lp, will absolutely take care of this issue.