Name Your Top 5 Most Musical Dynamic Sounding Tonearms of All time?


Could you list your top 5 all time favourite sounding Tonearms and on which table. 
vinny55
I’ll mention the Mørch DP-8 here because what it does with the bass in my system.  It’s grip on the low end allows for excellent musical dynamics.  Love it with SoundSmith Zephyr MIMC and Lyra Atlas.
Breuer Dynamic Type 8c tonearm with ZYX 4D on a Brinkmann LaGrange. This combo has kept me ecstatic for almost a decade.

I had a Trans Fi Terminator for a few years and It is a very fine sounding arm that you would need to pay a lot more for to get something better. I think It worked best with medium/high compliance pick-ups. I have a preference low compliance, high-mass, mc pick-ups and now use a second-hand Ikeda CR IT 407 mounted on a Merrill Williams 101.2. I have a (re-built by Ikeda aka ITT Industries) Ikeda Kai mc and the combination Is very musical, dynamic, and thoroughly  enjoyable. For trying out charity-shop, second-hand vinyl, to see what's worth keeping, I have a Denon DL 103 mounted In a Musikraft body. A 17g Ikeda headshell gives too low a tonearm resonance so I have the Denon mounted In a 10g Yamamoto Ebony headshell. Actually the Denon DL 103 Is astonishingly superb In the Ikeda arm. If I hadn't got the Kai for a bargain price I'd be happy with the Denon. It tracks any record with no audible distortion. It Is dynamic and has very solid sound-staging. I'm of the opinion that the tonearm Is more Important the pick-up. The Denon, mounted In Ikeda arm would put to shame many, much dearer pick-ups, mounted in lesser tonearms.






 

There are a lot of good and interesting arm recommendations made in this thread, but, as I said before, it is hard to attribute any particular qualities to the arm alone, particularly dynamics and a sense of being "musical."  At best, one can say certain combinations of arm, cartridge and tables have these qualities as strengths (and someone may find those same qualities weaknesses).

You could argue that an arm that can handle the demands of a Decca London cartridge is extremely dynamic because the cartridge sounds dynamic.  The same could be said of an arm that optimizes the performance of a Van den Hul Colibri. 

Keep in mind that "dynamics" is determined by the particular table chosen.  As a rough rule, tables with direct drive, idler drive and very high torque motors on belt drives tend to sound dynamic.  While I am tempted to say that a lot of tables without a spring suspension also sound dynamic, but, there are plenty of exceptions to that rough call (e.g., a good Linn setup is quite lively sounding).  Also, the kind of platter mat on any given table also affects the damping of vibration which greatly affects the sense of dynamics (the right mat is quite specific to each setup).