TT, 12" Tonearm. Who tried and ended up preferring 12" arm?

Seller says he is shipping my TT monday from Canada. I re-arranged everything, made a big improvement in stability I was putting off, ordered a tempered glass shelf for the monster.

12-inch tonearm made of cocobolo must have very high effective mass. Fine for low compliance cartridges. Not so fine for high compliance ones. There is no single best length or best material for a tonearm.

@lewm

18g, since there is no detachable "headshell" on my version of Reed 3p we can only add the mass of the cartridge and screws.

So when you mount an MM on your Fidelity-Research FR-64s the "problem" is much more serious than with Reed Cocobolo. I think the mass of FR 64s is twice as much. However, you reported a good results with MM, i also can say that 18g Reed was superb with mid compliance MM cartridges (Garrott p77, Victor X-1 and X-1II, Glanz 61, AT-ML180 etc).

I bought my Reed especially for ZYX Premium 4D SB2 when i sold my EPA-100 about 5 years ago, but everything turned up not as i expected, so i ended up using different cartridges on Reed arm. I remember i was happy with Garrott P77.  

Dust cover on when not playing, off when playing are the rules at this casa.

To do otherwise is counterproductive to the goal of excellent sound.

Chak, I’m surprised the 3P is so light. My 10.5 inch 2A in red cedar is at least 12g. I never use any FR headshell in the 64S. Much of the mass of the 64S is due to the OEM headshell. I tend to use a CF headshell that weighs about 9 g. But your point is well taken if the 3P is as light as you say. And both of us are violating the golden rule when we pair these tonearms with high compliance cartridges.

As I have said before Lewm, sometimes stuff works even when on paper it should not.
But the last time I made a statement along similar lines over what I tried and it sort of worked, Chakster jumped all over it.
Maybe he has mellowed and realized that sometimes it just works out.