Dear chakster, As I mentioned Vidmantas the owner/designer by Reed also made an armpod for my Kuzma. He produces those as separates since. So you can ask him to make one for you. Now regarding our friendship. He appointed his daughter in law as his ''external representative'' so I got her answers to my emails. Alas this lady has no idea about analog stuff so I lost interest in our correspondence . |
@nandric Nandric, surprisingly I have never dismantled a FR64s. Dampening does not need to be provided by a lossy material such as rubber or grease. For example, if 2 different metals are joined together you can achieve bimetallic dampening. Example - Copper mat on aluminium platter dampens the aluminium. Technically you could argue the FR64 arm tube is damped by both the headshell joint and the joint between the tube and bearing pillar itself. The arm itself in toto is damped by the termination/armboard material. Personally with 2 FR64S in my stable I have heard the "upper mid brightness" on occasion but this also depends on cartridge choice and arm termination/turntable as to whether it is an issue. The Naim Aro arm tube is "undamped" but has no upper mid brightness with any of the many cartridges I have used. No tonearm is without colourations, when one describes the sound of a tonearm one is really describing the sound of the sum of the parts - turntable, tonearm, cartridge, cable and phono stage. This seems to be the point that continues to elude the Mexican. Despite owning many tonearms that provide dampening, I have achieved maximum transparency by not employing dampening, but through cartridge compatibility and accurate set up. When I owned a high end shop in the 80's my experience was that 90% of turntables were not set up optimally and that in many instances dampening was used as a bandaid for what was ostensibly poor set up or system colourations. |
@nandric Your Lustre 801 has only the (thin) armwand made from steel. Right, Lustre GST-801 Vibration-proofing of stainless steel arm-pipe. The rest composed of brass parts with huge stabilizer. I enjoyed this arm pretty much with various MM cartridges (Pioneer PC1000 mkII was great along with At-ML180), it’s the heavyest tonearm i have ever owned, low compliance MC carts (FR-7f and SPU Royal G MKII) were both fantastic. @offnon57 I think this GST-801 is alternative to FR-64S with silver wire. Lustre GST-801 comes with silver wire too. The Lustre GST-801 is the first dynamic balance tone arm with contactless stylus force application system. This Lustre's unique variable magnetic flux type stylus force application system is a magnetic contactless system of compact and simple construction using a rare earth magnet. Features high Precision radial bearings. VTA on the fly, Magnetic flux type anti-skating mechanism. I’m waiting for my FR-64FX to try.Meanwile the Lustre arm migrated to another home in my neighbourhood. It will be mounted on Technics SP-20 for a friend. This is my last picture of the Lustre 801. |
