Dougolsen:
Hi Doug. If I may humbly suggest a couple of things. Before you go to the expense of an arm to negate an artifact of which the root cause does not seem to be the arm, you may want to investigate a few other avenues. I have found (over the year and 2+ months I've owned this deck) that two factors can cause brightness and a sort so sterility.
if the bearing has less than a SOLID 700 hours of time on it, the deck (or I should more correctly state, my deck) sounds a bit out of sorts, a-musical if you will while in automatic mode. The unit displays a sort of colder non-continuousness. I know this non-continuousness is not intrinsic to the table. I ran my unit in manual torque setting mode at 20% of full power and that sounded great. Once I had logged the aforementioned hours, the auto mode trumped manual mode significantly.
The other culprit is the switch mode power supply. That supply absolutely introduces a sterility and life robbing attribute to the sound. One way to test this is to play another source with breathy remain vocals. Try Eva Cassidy "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" from another source if you have it (the music is just a suggestion which I know easily demonstrates how bad the supply denigrates the sound). First listen to about 45 seconds of Eva with the GAE powered up, next unplug the GAE (it is NOT enough to turn it off as it is essentially still on simply in low power mode) and play the same 45 seconds of music (beginning of the track). You should hear a startling difference in presentation.
Solutions: I know of three ways to mitigate the unfortunate effects of the SMPS. 1. Have a LPS replace the crappy internal SMPS (this is what I'm in the process of doing). 2. Get a really long extension cord and connect the GAE as far away from your other components as possible. 3. Utilize Blue Cirlces line of filters designed specifically for the problems of virulent SMPS noise. Gilbert's products (some of them are units which you simply plug in next to your system, they have no inlets) really really work and are the ONLY devices I've found so far to significantly negate the problems of SMPS's.
Using the Blue Cirlce filters along with a longer cord and a PS Audio P5 on my source components along with the midrange and tweeter amplifiers has gone a long long way to quell the nasties of the power supply.
My regulated LPS supply is still in the design/build stage.
i hope this helps. Economical solution? get a long extension cord and one of Gilbert's less expensive filters, plug the TT in as far away from your stereo as possible and then plug the Blue Circle filter in right next to the extension cord (at the outlet).
I promis you that a tonearm swap will not absolve you of the problems of a SMPS, it may sound different but the table will still be its own worse enemy.
That supply is the one weakness in an overall brilliant design. Unfortunately they have chosen to repeat this error in the upcoming SP10-R.
Hope this helps.
