Eminent Technology ET-2 Tonearm Owners

Richardkrebs
the cartridge is not expending all its effort in trying to rotate are arm but a vector of this force due to the offset angle.

Actually it is the tracking angle that propels the arm inwards, which is different from offset angle. The skating forces are proportional to the tracking angle and tracking force. With higher tracking forces the skating force reduces. It also reduces with longer arms due to the reduced tracking angle. If you are tracking from about 2.5g with a 12" arm the skating force becomes very small, and if the tonearm is designed with breakdown torque taken into account at this point it is possible to run a pivoted arm without anti skate. Stylus profile also impacts the skating force. Ladegaards theory ignores these causal factors and assumes no anti skate is applied, therefore it is a worst case scenario and improbable in reality..

Conversely on eccentric records the high horizontal mass of a linear tracking arm will create tracking distortion. Very few records are truly round, and increasing the mass with lead on a linear tracker will increase the inertia of the arm in the horizontal plane and increase distortion on eccentric records due to cantilever flex. Thigpens' recommendations are that with records with an eccentricity of 1/8" a low mass pivoted arm will be superior.

Dgarretson - your listening experience that lower mass is giving superior results with the Terminator mirrors most ( actually all except for one ) of the users of the ET2 on this thread that have attained optimum sound quality from the correct application and tuning of the low mass/decoupled counterweight design parameters that the ET2 is based upon.

Hi Dgarretson – Does the wiring on the Terminator play a role in damping (stabilizing) the stylus ?
cheers

Hi Richard - are you up and running with the new pump yet?

Cheers

Thigpens' recommendations are that with records with an eccentricity of 1/8" a low mass pivoted arm will be superior.

Dover this has been mentioned many times here and is documented in the ET2 manual. What I am curious about however is that at the time of printing of the original ET2 manual MM’s were in their heyday. MC’s became more popular later and BT adjusted with the 2.5. I am wondering if he was printing an update to his manual, if a heavier mass pivot over a lower mass one would be recommended for MC specifically. Any opinion ?

Fwiw

From my record collection there are idk maybe 150 -200 put aside – they can be seen on the ground in the pic of my listening room. These I listen to on a regular basis.
From this group there is only one record I am aware of that falls in that range of 1/8 inch. This record happens to be one of my wife’s favorites and I use it to ....entice her into the room :^)

My solution to this oddball record was to drill out the hole and spend 30 seconds centering it with my DIY center weight seen here.

http://cgim.audiogon.com/i/vs/i/f/1366423048.jpg

The pressure points are on the outside and there is a washer underneath. Actually various size washers can be used as needed. Mostly however my records are in good shape warp and off center hole wise (meaning not visually noticeable).

Cheers

ct0517 wrote: " Does the wiring on the Terminator play a role in damping (stabilizing) the stylus?"

It may do so, but not by design. If not carefully dressed between the gantry and the wand, the tonearm wires have the greater potential to do harm by fouling the wand's free movement. The torque effect is exacerbated with a five-wire balanced harness. To minimize torqueing, one of these days soon I'm going to try making a harness with very light-gauge AN silver wire.