Tonearm recommendation

Dear fleib:  """  With all your ear training I'm surprised you can't hear the affect of over-damping a tonearm. One can MEASURE a negative affect on transient response by over-damping. It also tends to kill the natural sustain of acoustic instruments. I agree with Dover, arms are easily over-damped.  """

problem is that you don't really read with care my posts and additional that you are very dogmatic. 
Look and I repeat: WE CAN'T OVERDAMP A TONEARM EVER.

Before you post again on this subject please re-read what I posted to dover where the essence is here:

"""  in an audio perfect world with out TT/platter/arm board/tonearm/  vibrations/resonances/feedback/generated noise/ system/room air pollution and with perfect LPs  the cartridge pick up the information exist in the LP grooves and before and after the cartridge makes its transducer job what we have and pass through the tonearm internal wires is just the recorded grooves modulations with no single added " noises " of any kind and this modulation grooves music information is what you, me and every one want to listen: THE PURE MUSICAL INFORMATION ....."""""""


in that Pure Muscal Information comes all that transient response and the natural sustain of acoustic instruments. In the LP grooves modulations comes all type of " sounds " recorded, almost nothig is lost and all these is what we want to listen with out adding NOTHING so please tell me: how can we overdap a tonearm?, for me it's impossible to do it because all those recorded information in the LP grooves modulations goes in the tonearm internal wires.
Remember that we are talking on a " analog perfect world " where any additional " information " ( name it noise, distortions, resonances or what ever you want to name it. ) only goes against that " transient response, the natural sustain of acoustic instruments and several other things.

So, because we don't live in a perfect audio world we must to " overdamp " the tonearm.
I know to what kind of quality sound you are accustom to just like almost every one else. I was there too.

Try to think " out of the box " try to ask you:

HEY WHAT IF SEVERAL OF THE INFORMATION I RECEIVED THROUGH MY AUDIO LIFE 20-50 years ) WAS WRONG INFORMATION?

and that is my advise to any audiophile that wants to grow-up.

So, the worst tonearm design is the non-damped one. Btw, the Jelco is way superior to the 64/66 but his owner can'tdiscriminate in between, that's all.

Regards and enjoy the music,
R.

Dear fleib:  Could you overdamp a TT or a cartridge?, no you can't. What any audiophile wants is to " overdamp " those analog rig items/links to can honor what's in the LP grooves modulations.
We want that the analog rig be not only transparent but that disappears ( but the grooves modulations picked up by the cartridge/transducer. ) from the reproduced sound. Everything comes in those LP grooves modulations and comes in " pristine " condition.

We are not talking what we like or what we are accustom to but what must be like it or not what you percieve through ears/brain/body.

Of course that I can be wrong and as always I'm willing to retify if necessary.

R.

Tonearms to hard core audiophiles are like politics for most all of us. Best left off the table,  As several have mentioned, what is really needed are actual data.  One sort of experiment that I would like to see done would be as follows:
Decide upon two or maybe three cartridges, one with high compliance, one with low compliance, one that is "medium".  
Mount each of them in turn into the tonearm that is to be evaluated.  
Inject into the cartridge pure tones that span the audio frequency range, say 20 to 10K Hz at log intervals, e.g., 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, 1K, etc, and at each single frequency, take a look at a spectrum analysis of the output. Absolutely no subjective judgement allowed.
This would tell us something about tonearm/cartridge interaction.  For example, to obtain data that would bear on the Raul/Halcro battle, compare an FR66S to a tonearm of equivalent effective mass (if there is one) that is perhaps made of wood or is otherwise dampened.  Or, compare results for a high-ish compliance cartridge in an FR66S to those for the same cartridge mounted in some other tonearm that is deemed to be more appropriate by conventional wisdom, because of its much lower effective mass.

In other words, it would not be so impossible to obtain data on this subject.  "Sturm und drang" only take us so far.  I wonder whether HW has ever done such an investigation.