diy tangential tonearms


I hope to have a tangential tracking tonearm one day. The available new ones cost five figures and Revox is not acceptable because of the difficulty in maintaining it and others come with turntables which threaten to be difficult to repair or rebuild. I like the turntable I have and a tangential tonearm could be installed through what appear to be three standard positioned screws which hold the present arcing tonearm in place.
The expensive tangential tonearms have air bearings which minimize any rumble from the arm sliding down its track. Other such tonearms use a servo to try to move the tonearm which can't be precise enough to do any good when the spacing between record groves varies with the amplitude of the music signal. Furthermore, air bearings will introduce the hissing sound of the air and that hissing noise is bound to be louder than any speaker noise the friction of an oil bearing might introduce. Air pumps, the dirt and filter and water condensation problems are not acceptable. From what I can find, my only way to have a tangential tonearm is to make one myself.
Does anybody have any suggestions, for instance, a set of plans I could buy for a tangential tonearm which does not require an air bearing or a servo motor drive? I have built other electronics myself which I like more than what I could buy if I could afford it. I think if I took my time machining the parts it would make a nice finishing touch to my turntable. Your ideas would be of great value to me.
drbarney1
Damn @uberwaltz, I just looked at your link. The Air Prodigy appears to be a note-perfect Terminator knock-off. 500 bucks? How can you loose?! If the Terminator is a great bargain (I think so), the AP may be twice the bargain. I’m a little leery of the nylon arm wand, but that may turn out to be unfounded. If I didn't already own a single-run silver-wired Terminator, I'd be all over the Air Prodigy.
I know Eric, near perfect" copy" .
Yes the nylon 3d printed tonearm may be unusual but it's probably less likely to have an effect on this application than a regular pivoted system.

I do like the fact it is supposed to run on just a low pressure air pump.

I'm close to biting the bullet, shoot it's less than the cost of one PPT Omega plus mat for heaven's sake.

I have wasted way more that that in the past.
The AP builder said he owned a TFiT and his AP is not a knock-off. It looks like a patent infringement to me if there is one.
@drbarney1

Assuming your labor is free, what is your budget for materials and parts ?
fwiw
I know of two people that went this route. They both had the same challenge The Bearing "House" aka the Bearing Chamber. They both ended up with the same type of solution.

They took the (the bearing house) from an existing design and they went DIY for the everything in front and after the bearing house/chamber. If it doesn't violate patents, and copies are not made for others - then I guess you can call it DIY. Someone correct me if I am wrong.

I have not made any hasty decisions on this, but here is what I conclude so far: I am not interested in air bearings because they are too complicated and too given to maintenance requirements and the noise they make diminishes the signal to noise ratio as a whole of the system - such noise would not be tolerated if it cane from the speakers. If I went the tangential tonearm way I would get a used turntable with a servo driven tonearm. The tracking error is reported to only go up to at most 2 degrees before the servo applies correction, verses 15 to 10 degrees for a pivoted tonearm. With the pivoted tonearm a typical tracking error causes one side of the needle to delay on the order of about 0.25 milliseconds which at the speed of sound of 1000 feet per second (the acoustic speed outdoors on a cold winter day) this is equivalent to one speaker being 3 inches further away than the other But with two ears is this significant, It does not seem to deter engineers who specialize in their subject more than the general physics you get from a PhD program from using 9 inch tonearms instead of 12 inch tonearms to tame resonant modes in a tonearm.
Still, there is something almost Zen about a linear tracking tonearm which I find philosophically attractive the way I find something akin to a Viking Valhalla to the degree of Wagnerian about using radio station transmitter tubes in a stereo amplifier.
I look forward to the comments of others on this matter.