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Tonearms: Ripoff?

If you search for tonearm recommendations you'll find an overwhelming amount of praise for $1k and less products. Audiomods and Jelco are the two most mentioned.

The Audiomods is just some guy making Rega-based tonearms in a workshop. Just some guy is putting out tonearms that compete with tonearms that cost many times the price -- from the likes of SME, Clearaudio, VPI, Graham, etc.

So the question is -- are tonearms just a scam? How is it that everyone loves Audiomods and Jelco to death and never talks about / dismisses high end tonearms? Is it because there's no real difference between one of these low-cost tonearms and the high end ones? Is an Audiomods Series V ** really ** the equivalent of a SME V? Some guy in a workshop equals the famed precision of SME? Is that once you have the math and materials worked out all tonearms are essentially the same? Or is it that most owners of record players online are dumpster-diving for vintage gear and simply can't afford to listen to better?

So, what's going on?
madavid0
tkr
100 posts
 
Is shirtless typing a ripoff?

I tried it this afternoon, and I didn´t notice any improvement in performance at all! No matter which shirt I wasn`t wearing, even expensive ones, nothing really happened. 

Just goes to prove, not wearing cheap shirts is just as good as not wearing expensive ones.
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br3098
997 posts
 
Where the hell you can find FR-66 for $3500 ? This tonearm price tag is over $6000 nowadays.
OK, but I was only thiiis much off.  I was trying to take an optimistic approach.

If you don't know, you can just say "I don't know".
Typically, you missed the entire point  of my reply.  Did you read anything after the sentence you quoted above?  As do many of us, I fins that a correctly matched tonearm to be invaluable to optimizing the analog experience.  Elizabeth, whom I admire greatly (now that I know she cruises for naked guys), apparently does not share this sentiment.  So YMMV.

madavid0 OP
214 posts
 
Typically, you missed the entire point of my reply. Did you read anything after the sentence you quoted above? As do many of us, I fins that a correctly matched tonearm to be invaluable to optimizing the analog experience.
So high end tonearms are a ripoff?
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