Eminent Technology ET-2 Tonearm Owners

Dave/Frogman -
Interesting your comments on going back to the aluminium arm with MM's.
With my aluminium arm I removed the heat shrink and internal foam. This yielded a lighter sound, but cleaner, clearer and less smear with both high and low compliance cartridges -Shure V15Vmr/Denon 103/Carnegie/Koetsu Black.

I also removed the soft teflon from the headshell and epoxied in a piece of carbon fiber. If you dont mind butchering your arm tube a little all you do is prise open the end, the teflon will pull straight out if you can get a good grip on it with some long nose pliers. Then just cut and insert the carbon fiber with epoxy and clamp the headshell up in a vice.

In my view with the low compliance cartridges tweaking the spring counterweight set up is plenty sufficient to get the optimum without having to add mass to the arm tube. I had no tracking problems with low compliance cartirdges in my lightened aluminium armtube. Follow the instructions on counterweight position, ie low mass further out and tuning.

When you go to 2 or 3 springs you are increasing the mechanical coupling of the mass of the counterweight and the cartridge sees more horizontal mass. I still prefer decoupling the spring by loosening the end cap and using teflon wedges to dampen the swinging counterweight motion even with low compliance cartridges.

Frogman you reported hearing more bass notes when you loosened the end cap off. Any update on this ?

Thank you, sir Chris
Nice to meet you. I very much appreciate your love and affection/opinions about linear air bearing trackers as general but I have no idea nor experience of ET-2, and especially your intelligence for having got one of the most exotic and mightiest TTs, the Platine.
Its magnetic field levitation/non-mechanical bearing must something like drive a good old Citroen. I fell for the BX more than 20 years ago and it can be taken away only over my dead body.
And me ? I´m just a lawnlower. And part of the GENESIS mythology I´m afraid. But I´m not like Harold the Barrel, that quite peculiar yet nice fellow from early days still going strong. And I appreciate him greatly as well. You see, my favorite song is "Harold the Barrel" from 1971.
Excuse me my ignorance about these fascinating things going on at A´gon lately but I´ve been busy with my own rather unorthodox experiments. In fact, I need to do a couple of final adjustments on my TT project right now.
Funny thing is, when I turn my back to A´gon for a few months at least one person has taken a giant leap in TTs... Well, you can´t stop Evolution can you.
Good day to you.

Harold

and it can be taken away only over my dead body.

Hi Harold - the last time I heard the words sir I was working :^(
You are a gentleman sir. The stark reality of it for me is that I am a middle aged runner; and whenever I get a muscle pull, strain or just have pain, its taking longer and longer to recover. As I come to grips with my own mortality every day, I gain more and more respect for all those things around us that have passed the test of time and will still be around when I am not. Now as long as we are making clothes with thread, this Platine will provide beautiful music with no bearing to wear for someone. Likewise the ET2 if you feed it good air. The Transfi looks like an interesting design - unfortunately my personal guard comes down a 1/2 hour into the music and I become a bit of a klutz - with its permanent spot over the platter I fear for my lp and cartridge. The ET2 is pretty much klutz proof' although I did behead an XV1 once that was attached to an ET2; but it was on an armpod 15 feet way from the table. Still gives me the shakes thinking about it. thank you again Axel for bringing it back to life. If I didnt have many years of schooling to still pay for, of all the newer tonearms I have seen the Schoreder Linear Tracker looks really interesting to me.

You see, my favorite song is "Harold the Barrel" from 1971.

So cool. Without thinking I used my initials and some random numbers for my moniker - they now follow me through Audiogon eternity. I was 8 in 1971 and am a Genesis fan and the other British super groups having grown up with them, their lps and concerts. They made a huge impact in Canada and myself. Springsteen also ranks very high - this is just as much to me about the meaning of the words in the songs having the capability to stir the blood in you, as the music itself. I listened to Devils and Dust last night.

Knowing the story your moniker now ranks in my personal top four along with Swampwalker, Frogman and Vegasears - the last one doesn't need a story :^)

Cheers Chris

A couple more opportunities for ET2's.

One of the earliest ET2's available here.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=380777927186&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:CA:1120

How do I know this ? Well it has no label / lettering on the manifold.
At first I thought it could be a fake? But then I thought who in the world could make a copy of this tonearm.

besides - Bruce confirmed to me the first ones that went out had no lettering.... :^)

The second one.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Systemdek-IV-e-Turntable-with-Eminent-Technology-ET-2-Tonearm-and-Ortofon-HMC-30-/161159019251?ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:CA:1120

In one of the ad pics can be seen a homemade pvc surge tank.

Not affiliated with either of these ads.

Cheers

Dover, by loosening the screw the bass range gained clarity and speed. The bass is not necessarily stronger, but instead of some bass notes sounding simply like amorphous low frequency energy there is air around the notes, much better pitch recognition, and the sense of a low frequency "floor" in the music wether there is actual bass in the music or not. Of course, this was after experimenting to find just the right amount of loosening of the screw. In my setup what worked best is to loosen it completely and then tighten it so the I beam spring sees the slightest amount of "grab". Thanks again for the suggestion.