Eminent Technology ET-2 Tonearm Owners

Chris.

My trash bin....
Too many years ago to count, I went about building 5 off BD TTs in quick succession. The platter was aluminium, bearing had a tungsten carbide thrust plate with replacable steel ball on the shaft. All five were of the same design, the difference being the plinth material. I simply changed the bearing, platter, motor and arm from one to the other.
#1 Laminated MDF. Slooow and colored
#2 Laminated hardboard( like compressed MDF.) Better but still slow and colored.
#3 Concrete. Hard and bright
#4,5 Slate. Quite good, slightly bright, which was mitigated with a lamination of MDF on its base. I sold #5 to a then Linn owner.
After this I went on to build 4 off unipivot arms. Based on the geometry of the Hadcock CH228. They all had saphire bearing cups with ss pins. Brass pillars and magnesium headshells.The only change was the wand material.
#1 epoxy resin infused balsa wood. This was not as stiff as expected and this was reflected in its sound, smeered and soft.
#2 hard wood dowel. Lovely, glorous, romantic but colored.
#3 undamped aluminium tube. Nice and clear with a slight rising top end.
#4 damped thin wall glass tube. Easily the best. Clear and articulate. This was broken awhile later during transportation and I was too devistated to rebuild it.

Does any one else have similar war stories? I am interested in your findings.

Richardkrebs,
With all due respect the sonic signature of the different materials you outline are meaningless unless the rest of the system is described at the time of testing. For example it might well have been that the system was slow and the concrete, whilst sounding hard, may have been showing up coloration elsewhere. I see very little science and no concrete evidence to support your observations.
Furthermore, it is well known that the geometry of the original Hadcock 228 was in fact incorrect and if you had built an arm to that geometry then I'm surprised you could not hear the high tracking error and distortion. Specifically the offset angle was incorrect and this was remedied with the release of the 242 in recent years.

Richard – interesting findings – thanks for sharing. Sorry to hear about that glass armtube. Would have liked to see a picture of that one.

Chris.
Yes the glass arm was special. I used magnesium from a broken aeroplane wheel hub to mill the headshell. Slotted mounting holes to facilitate correct cartridge alignment.

I have one of the slate TT's somewhere in storage in the attic. Will see if I can find it amongst the detritus of time, maybe post some pics.

Dover, you wrote regarding Richardkrebs (and Chris/Ct0517 when he changed to his magnesium arm wand, as they used the same methodology) ....

"I see very little science and no concrete evidence to support your observations."

With all due respect, would you please articulate what 'science and concrete evidence' you apply in similar situations.