Eminent Technology ET-2 Tonearm Owners

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.

Hi Slaw – are you running an in room ET2 filter or pressure regulator ? I added a ground to the in room regulator at the suggestion of Richard. It seems to have helped. Recommend you give it a try.

Hum Story and maybe a lesson.

I am finishing the space in the adjacent basement area next to my main room. I noticed a hum coming from a certain area in the room near the ceiling by a light. Looking over I noticed a little transformer attached to the light base from the time the house was built. It was humming away – could be heard from a few feet away. I disconnected it and peace prevailed. The room is quiet now.
My wife is not too happy because I have not yet reinstalled the wire to the back of the house like I said I would. I have discovered that I like not having a doorbell, and I told her there is a “door knocker” on the door. My kids are on my side on this one. But they are also the ones too lazy to get up and see who is at the door whenever anyone shows up. Now here is something I find interesting. Of the people that come to the door. No one appears to know what the obvious “in your face” door knocker is for anymore. They knock with their knuckles instead when they discover the push button doorbell doesn’t work. We have become a pushbutton society.

My Lesson Learned.
What if you have a system on a raised main floor, and the gear is sitting in a rack, or near the ground (amp/s) a foot or two from this humming transformer just below. Only a wood floor separates them.

Dover was the noise from the silver wiring noticeable on your Final Audio or another TT ?

03-31-13: Dover
Richardkrebs re your last post.
I believe we have something in common. In the contract work I specialise in I too am totally indispensable.

Dover/Richard, in my line of work (business continuity planning) one of the key objectives of every project for the consultants is to identify and eliminate as many SPF’s as possible. Single Points of Failure. By eliminate I mean an "action plan" for management to follow in a powerpoint or similar presentation.

Richard, as an admirer of the Kuzma Airline tonearm; do you have any thoughts on Kuzma’s Top of the Line Version which comes with a
Brass Armpod

Have you ever used, experimented with a armpod ?

Cheers