Eminent Technology ET-2 Tonearm Owners

Richardkrebs - So predictable. Yes there may be other brilliant designs, but the discussion is about the ET2, in case you've forgotten.

Yet again you just dont understand the physics.
You are trying to turn the ET2 into a home brew Kuzma, Rockport, or other design which have started with a different set of design parameters and operating assumptions completely - different masses involved, different bearings required, different air pressures required, forces will be seen by the arms differently and completely different set of resonances involved, all of which are fundamental to the performance of any of these arms.

You are tinkering around trying to convert a low mass tangential arm into a high mass tangential arm but have failed to address most of the queries I raised. You have provided some home grown theories and analogies that bear no resemblance to engineering science. You have provided no measurements of your system to support your assertions.
Bruce Thigpens documented design brief and extensive testing show that your approach is wrong in the context of the ET2 ( this thread is about the ET2 ).

I remind you that if you go back to my very first post after you described your lead footed home modified ET2 that my comments on increased distortion, increased cantilever flex, possible record damage from mis-tracking were all preceded with the words "on eccentric records" and I stand by that statement.

In your self taught engineering school of fabulosity do you understand what an eccentric record is?

Do I need to remind you of the laborious weeks of denial on your part that the cantilever does not see the side loads generated from an eccentric record, accompanied by much junk science subsequently refuted by Bruce Thigpen.

Do I need to remind you of the incorrect advice you gave to Thekong and then retracted when I pointed out your own self conflicting arguments, which you then retracted.

In a nutshell Richard you are telling Porsche drivers they can improve their car by converting it to a Hummer. If you prefer the Hummer, I have no issue with that. If you try to tell me that there are no consequences arising from this conversion then you are wrong - yet again.

Richardkrebs
Further to the above, you conceded that after 25 years of owning and modifying your ET2, you did not understand how the I beam decoupling system worked until recently:

03-19-13: Richardkrebs
It could be that tuning here with springs and weights (and their position) is at least partly to do with sorting this possible frequency interaction rather than just the weight or stiffness employed.
03-20-13: Richardkrebs
The thought that there may be more going on with the decoupled counterweight was triggered by your post where you quoted BT where he said that the ibeam had a natural frequency of 2-5 hz.
This is close to the resonant frequency of the arm itself. This could have performance implications.

That means you added your lead mass and removed the decoupling of the the I beam without any understanding of how they were designed to work by your own admission.
Clearly you have never heard your ET2 set up correctly as per the manual because you never understood how to tune the I beam and counterweights.
This means that your comments on the merits or otherwise of your modifications are irrelevant to this discussion as you have never heard a standard arm set up correctly. It is a great pity you never heard my Sota/ET2/Denon set up correctly all those years ago as I believe you would have a different view today.

Question regarding how the whole 'arm' structure/material and how it 'mates' with grounding, regarding tonearm wire?

Some arms are prewired with a 5 wire loom/ one lead specifically for ground. Why is this not needed/offered with the ET? How does magnesium serve as an electrical conduit?

Hi Slaw,
The arm wand and bearing tube are ungrounded. I tried grounding the aluminium arm wand but couldn't hear any difference. I had a major problem with RF when using van den hul monocrystal silver wire, and went back to a stranded copper litz ( same as used in the old Sumiko PBT tonearm interface ) and had no RF problems whatsoever after that. My arm cable went from the wand straight into the phono on the side of the TT rather than through the bearing tube. If you are using the aluminium arm tube, running an electrical signal along a piece of aluminium can induce hysteresis distortion in the signal and maintaining a litz configuration would be desirable.

Richardkrebs re your last post.
I believe we have something in common. In the contract work I specialise in I too am totally indispensable. Not only dozens but hundreds of employees world wide depend on my expertise. One mistake and a company could be bankrupted. Worse still, the New Zealand economy could collapse. Like you I also understand Q, and P that comes before it and R that comes after, and the other 22 letters of the alphabet too. Part time I moonlight as a neurosurgeon. My expertise in soldering gives me the manual dexterity to perform such delicate operations. It provides a diversion from responding to lunatics who post garbage on audio blogs. With your background in avionics, you would have become accomplished in soldering too. Perhaps you could apply one of your many talents to a part time career in neurosurgery. Just a thought.