Tonearms: Ripoff?

A really good tone arm is a really nice investment- the bigger your record collection, the better.
The ability of the arm to properly track the cartridge is far more important than which cartridge you use. If the cartridge tracks properly then your LPs last longer- no breakup or strain when things get complex.
I've never heard a cheap tone arm really do that, although some are not bad (and are probably the ones that people say are alright when they promote older/cheaper arms).

I'm a fan of the Triplanar- nothing phases it. Tracks anything, never goes out of adjustment, One of the few that gets the deep bass right, the easiest arm to set up correctly as everything is adjustable. Has the hardest metal bearings made (which allows them to be perfectly adjusted- no slop, no damage to the bearing points; something you can't do with jeweled bearings). A damped arm tube. And so on- but its not particularly cheap. But that's OK- right now I have enough stupid rare LPs in my collection that I could easily sell it for over $100K (although it might take a while). When you have stuff thats irreplaceable, you think a lot more about doing it justice with good quality.

Maybe a lot, or maybe nothing.

If you don't know, you can just say "I don't know".

A Tri-Planar U2 costs $6k. A Triangle Art arm to go with my TA table is also $5k (although I'm sure they will offer me a discount because they never sell me anything at retail). But...I can get an Audiomods V with a VTA tower or a Jelco 850 for a fraction of the cost.

Let's say I want to move up from my TA Zeus to an Apollo? Maybe I'll take my bonus and go crazy with a Anna or above? THEN what will a premium tonearm give me?

What "features" matter to anyone? Counterweight adjustment, VTA tower...that's pretty much it right? I can get all useful features out of an Audiomods V, so why do I need anything else? Isn't there a performance difference?

@madavid0I wasn't sure what angle you were coming from so I recommended the lower end of the high end, an area I have a lot of experience in. ;-)
The thing is this though, if you have experience of upgrades and the improvements wrought from them, then you'd get what improvements better gear brings, albeit, on occasion, at a higher cost compared to the perceived gains. In other words, better tracking which allows finer detail to emerge from the mix, and less congestion in busy musical passages. The greater the accuracy of the bearings, the more music retrieved. Add in improved build quality and the beauty of the craftsmanship, improved accuracy of VTA adjustments etc. all bring more to the listener. Of course, one has to be able to discern these improvements, and this may influence where you seek the best bang for your outlay.

Dear @madavid0: What needs a good cartridge from the tonearm?:

-  pretty decent bearing ( it does not needs the " hardest " one. ) design.
- very well damped
- first rate (silver ) internal wiring with very best  ( silver ) female cartridge connectors.
- accurate and user friendly cartridge/tonearm protractor.
- precise VTA/SRA/VTF, scating and AZ mechanisms
- non-unipivot design.

More or less those are the main targets a cartridge is looking for. Normally good tonearms  even almost all those targets and the differences in between can comes form te: executuon quality of the design, build materials used as magnesium, titatinium, wood, etc, etc,  arm wand shape as J or S type, type of damp used, build material used at the bearings: stell, tungsten, ceramic, etc, etc., effective length and effective mass.

In reality there are many individual characteristics that makes the differences but not necessarily for the price.

Could happens that a specific cartridge can performs better in a Jelco than in a SAT or Triplanar one and this not really tell you that the Jelco is better but only that the cartridge is a better match with the Jelco.

Obviously that as anything in audio reproduction is room/system dependent and dependent too on each one of us MUSIC/Audio priorities.

Never exist and " easy " way to explain the kind of questions you posted because so many parameters involved .

R.