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Tonearm recommendation

Hello all,
Recently procured a Feickert Blackbird w/ the Jelco 12 inch tonearm.
The table is really good, and its a keeper. The Jelco is also very good, but not as good as my Fidelity Research FR66s. So the Jelco will eventually hit Ebay, and the question remains do I keep the FR66s or sell that and buy something modern in the 5-6 K range. My only point of reference is my old JMW-10 on my Aries MK1, so I don't know how the FR66s would compare to a modern arm. So I'd like to rely on the collective knowledge and experience of this group for a recommendation.

Keep the FR66s, or go modern in the 5-6K range, say a Moerch DP8 or maybe an SME.

Any and all thoughts and opinions are of course much appreciated.

Cheers,      Crazy Bill
wrm0325
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rauliruegas
13,101 posts
 
Dear don_c55: What in my opinion is a must to have from any tonearm is an user friendly ACCURATE cartridge/tonearm JIG for that set up.

It's ridiculous ( for say the least ) that almost any one of us own not one but several after market jigs/protractors because the one that comes with the tonearm is not ACCURATE or not user friendly.

IMHO, this is the major fault of almost all tonearm manufacturers. If these manufacturers make a good Jig/protractor then no one of us could want any after market device. That JIG is not " rocket science ".

That  tonearm/cartridge JIG is critical and an obligation by the tonearm manufacturers.

That's the " perfect " audio world where we live!.


Regards and enjoy the music,
R.
ochremoon
48 posts
 
@rauliruegas I cannot agree more. It's ridiculous that most tonearm manufacturers do not make an accurate, high quality jig to go with their own arms.
fleib
1,124 posts
 

and we plod on..... Most manufactures do provide a protractor. Best reg. protractors are provided by arm manufacturers. What do you want, a Feikert?  Add that to the cost of your arm and complain about that.

Ct0517, I found other mfg. comments (Re. 507) you posted, interesting.  Thanks. Lewm answered the bit about being able to use a straight run of wire in a pivoting arm. The rest of the quote from the loom maker is bizarre. It's the arm with exposed unshielded wire which is susceptible to RF and a Faraday cage won't help as long as the wires are exposed.

ViV Rigid Float anyone?  Interesting concept there, trading off alignment error for zero offset. This isn't a new concept. Yamaha had a YSA-2 upgrade for the GT2000, and the RS Labs which also had vertical cantilever offset compensation.

griffithds
852 posts
 
Flieb,

A few months back, I had my Lustre 801 arm re-wired by Discovery Cable. 
Excellent results BTW, but that is besides my point.  He asked if I wanted to eliminate the arm plug-in for cables by hard wiring the RCA's into this arm.  Because I had a custom made 20 inch phono cable available for this arm, I said no.  I have often thought since then, that perhaps I was to quick in making that decision.  Lewm seems to concur with my very thoughts at the time!
Regards,
fleib
1,124 posts
 

Griff,

There's a possible downside to any decision like that. I probably would have made the same decision as you. You now have the option to chance cables. The benefit of eliminating solder joints is overrated IMO.

How's the arm working out?

Regards,


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