No one wants to answer the question. Most serious responses boil down to "expensive tonearms are a scam". For example @lohanimal post above in which he likens it to the difference between a Casio and Patek; the Patek keeps time no better than a Casio so therefore it’s a scam.
The others just simply dodge the question by repeating meaningless truisms about matching arms to the system. If, say, a FIdelity Research is a good match and so is a Triplanar U12 SE, would it be foolish to chose the Triplanar — because you’re paying a lot more for the same performance? If that’s so, isn’t the Triplanar just a scam in the final analysis? Some guy with a machine shop making huge margins on suckers?
A few responders DO say there is a performance improvement with higher end tonearms — but these are the clear minority in this thread.
The others just simply dodge the question by repeating meaningless truisms about matching arms to the system. If, say, a FIdelity Research is a good match and so is a Triplanar U12 SE, would it be foolish to chose the Triplanar — because you’re paying a lot more for the same performance? If that’s so, isn’t the Triplanar just a scam in the final analysis? Some guy with a machine shop making huge margins on suckers?
A few responders DO say there is a performance improvement with higher end tonearms — but these are the clear minority in this thread.