FR64s & Orsonic Av-1s Effective mass ?

Dear @geddyen :  """ a tonearm with minimum degree of bearing friction and efficiente DAMPING. """

that's the Decca advise to the Super Gold owners. The tonearm and the after market headshell you choosed for your Decca cartridge goes against ( both. ) the manufacturer advise.

Your FR tonearm is a very old non-damped design. " Rings as a bell ". Your choosed headshell is an non-damped design too.
In both cases that's means a way higher distortions that a well damped tonearm/headshell design. 

In the other side its VTF mechanism "" rings as a bell "" too.

 If you have not other alternative to mount the Decca cartridge then make the VTF set up as if the tonearm design was not dinamically by design but static one, using exclusively the counterweight to make that VTF set up with the additional advantage that the counterweight will be nearer to the tonearm/bearing pillar.

 Unfortunatelly you own one of the worst tonearm and headshell designs in those regards.

Now, due that the vertical compliance is very low in the Super Gold could be better that the resonance frequency stay very close to 10hz and if posible in a diferent tonearm/headshell.

Decca manufacturer knows very well its cartridge designs and that's why they give precise advise on what kind of tonearm mate well with it.

Of course we can use any tonearm and the Decca  will " sound " but ( at least for me. ) that's not the priority but try to achieve the best quality sound/music performance level we can.

Regards and enjoy the music,
R.

Hi Rauliruegas

Good point about Decca recommendations. I actually did not know that, or thought that far. Typical caveman ideology, try first, read the manual after.
Also good point to use only the counterweight for VTF. Actually I tried that some time ago, most of curiosity reasons with another cartridge with acceptable results.

I also have an Basis Superarm 9 with good damping, so its no crisis here. But I was thinking to use the classic FR arm as my second/ dual mounted arm more or less for rock music/ casual listening. Would be fun to mount something else than low compliance mc's on the FR..

I have a FR 64S it has a Ortofon 2M black mounted (high compliance cart) and it sounds exceptional. Dynamic Tracking is set at 1.5g

In comparison i also have a SME 3010R with a AT ART9 mounted on a similar turntable and the 64S/2M combo sounds equally as good.

mt

An alternative way to get damping for the arm and/or Decca is to mount them on a Townshend Rock turntable, which has a damping trough at the headshell end of the arm. The Townshend damping system also reduces the Q of the arm/cartridge resonance.