Eminent Technology ET-2 Tonearm Owners

Frogman - I discovered the benefits of simply mulching the leaves with my riding mower.

Frogman, being the accomplished musician you are, I am having a hard time visualizing you on the back of a John Deere. this is most likely due to my own biases/prejudices. Do you wear audiophile approved ear plugs ?

I highly recommend these ones.
these ones - click me

These are easy to insert in any size ear canal and they work well. Not affiliated with this manufacturer.

Frogman - The instrument will sound (and certainly feel to the player) more tonally coherent and with a more "right" timbre (which will affect even the perceived intonation (!)) if all the springs (upwards of twenty) have the same or similar tension.

Is getting all springs with similar tension a routine task... and do some manufacturers of an instrument like the Saxophone make this easier to do than others ? Curious..

Speaking of biases.

Two of my uncles played the different saxes, clarinet and flute. One of them happened to also be the music teacher at my middle school. In Grade 6 or 7 ?, I got handed this instrument by him with a bunch of piping. I was told to go learn it as the first performance was in 4 weeks for the band. At the time I remember thinking, this thing sure wasn't as cool as the trumpet, sax, or drums. It was the trombone. So I learned everything about the Bass Clef with it. Little did I know that the years that followed playing it, would influence my biases toward music from that point forward, still to today. I tend to put a bias on bass, whether live, amplified or not, and when I listen at home to full range material, I am therefore of the opinion that if you can get the bass right in a room, the rest will fall into place. More to follow on bass management... I need to go rake up some leaves.

I remember this vividly, my mother saying to my Uncle Music Teacher while shaking her head. ...

"why in the world would you allow him to have an instrument that requires him to empty out his spit on my clean hardwood floors when he plays the instrument at home"

The floors in the school music room were disgusting. When you arrived for class you grabbed one of the mouthpieces that were in a small plastic tub sitting in some clear liquid. God only knows what that liquid was now thinking about it. The good ole days ? We survived. Now everyone is paranoid about everything. Different world not so long ago.

Uncle Music Teacher in response to my mom "should I have given him the drums ?"

Mom shakes her head..again.

Not sure if this has been brought before.
I read a post on Audio Asylum about the manifold mount and how flimsy it is. The guy found the right height and then built a new mount out of ebony. I simply used a piece of wood and wedged it under the manifold. This made a huge change in the soundstage and overall quality of the system.
Tim

Yes frogman & CT0517 on a John Deere, what nice illustration of Americana seen the other way :-) It shurely tunes bass sensitivity, although only in a limited interval range...
Regarding "spit", isn't what most lay people (ie. the non-blowing family members too) think it is. It's mainly distilled vapour from the lungs, with maybe a bit of sulfur molecules here and nitrogen mol. there. But not much spit, I think. At least not anymore after one played two or three years.
I call my baritone sax my personal distillery. But the bowed neck (?) of a bass clarinet works already nicely as such.
Regarding trombone: This is a really great instrument! (And - ha! Ray Anderson will play november 11 in our concert program! :-) The instrument is extremely powerful in a seductive way, a lot of colours and expressive. Must be fun to play with this huge tool-box.
It's funny you mention this aspect, of first getting the fundament right, the rest then falling in place: If I'm asked about what defines the quality of a well set up ET2 (or even more a ET2.5) it is the "full-range" sound from the *lows* up, surrounded by a lot of air in the bass (first): Bass ambience. Yes, it's also sublime upper ranges, but it starts with a lucid, airy bass range with a high resolution of bass timbre & pitch.
It sounds "correct" by itself while not sounding tight-assed NFB correct.

@flemke: I agree! These are gradually more consequent and less reversible ways of what my cardboard wedges underneath the manifold/bearing do.
The wood option might create a more stiff but more vibration conducting, but less absorbing pathway than cardboard.
I might try a hardwood wedge someday. I like tweaks to be as reversible, low mass and "elegant" (not necessary in the visual aspect ;-) as possible.