Eminent Technology ET-2 Tonearm Owners

Richard - An observation. I spent the weekend on the water boating and sometimes in the water - this was by accident as the temp is still only in the 70's. What was very obvious is that even with similar size boats but with different size/horsepower motors; the ones that had their prop set up properly....were able to skim the water, go on plane and performed far better than those similar boats with motors too large / long that had props that slugged lower through the water.
Where am I going with this ? Lets play crazy scientist again and assume that the prop in the water is like the tonearm's paddle in the oil.
I was puzzled with the big performance differences between your oil and non oil damped settings. Could your paddle be in the oil more; and the oil is acting as a cushion for your modded spindle as it goes back and forth with the lp? Just a thought. I am using just 1 cc of oil and the paddle is barely skimming the oil. fwiw - the oil in the trough also acts as a great visual level as well.

Are you a skimmer or a slugger ?

:^) fun hobby. Happy listening.

Chris.
Having owned power boats pretty much my whole adult life, I am very familiar with the effect you sight. There is a "golden" set of adjustments, propeller angle, trim tab setting, RPM, weight distribution, where once optimised, the boat becomes quiet, travels faster, the ride is smoother and it burns less fuel.
It is I believe a good analogy for a tone arm set up. There are many individual adjustments that combined correctly can result in "golden" performance.

It is probably difficult to compare oil trough settings. I am using a different oil and different paddle at the other end of the spindle. Further I have a fixed CW which means that the physics of the arm are quite different. The undamped resonant peak is higher on my arm, so it would need more damping to bring it under control.

mlswgdtftwg

It is probably difficult to compare oil trough settings. I am using a different oil and different paddle at the other end of the spindle. Further I have a fixed CW which means that the physics of the arm are quite different.

All good points Richard. Again too many variables. In conversation with Bruce last year I remember him saying the position of the trough was decided out of convenience. I think it can be reversed. I say this because my spare stock gooseneck has a hole marked in the bottom - for the paddle?.... Has anyone tried this ?

Hi Richard, there is continued interest in the

Aluminum ET2 Gooseneck

Received two recent emails, the latest this week from an Audiogon member on this ET2 thread asking about the possibility of doing a limited run on them. I will pm you with more details.

Posting here to let those that expressed previous interest in the Gooseneck aware. I will post any updated info here.

Cheers Chris

Chris.
Back in the day, nearly 20 years ago, I took a piece of aluminium to a machine shop along with the original plastic goose neck, set at the mid position and said to the machinist "copy this please". I did ask him to make the part that slid into the wand one thou bigger in dia as I felt that it was not a good fit in the wand I was using. There was no drawing produced. Now days to get a part machined in my shop I need a CAD drawing at $150/hour to produce. A CAM program at $150/ hour to produce. Machining itself at $450/hour, plus material which actually is the smallest cost of the lot. If we were making 100's it would be viable, but a small number would be very costly. The best option is to find a local machine shop that has lathes and milling machines and take an original goose neck along "please copy this" I used the same aluminium as the wand, 6061 T6, from memory. This info is somewhere in the manual.
Sorry I cannot be more helpful but, I would recommend that anyone interested goes through the effort. There is really a big jump up in performance when the quite flexible original is replaced.