Trans-Fi Terminator Tonearm: 2019 Update

How ‘loosely’ in your experience? A couple of dozen balls for a 5 liter tank?

Mostly filled, but neither packed nor compressed, to within a few inches of the outlet. The direct line between inlet and outlet apertures must be interrupted by cotton balls.

I must apologize for my previous post regarding the size of the surge tanks used. I have a 1 gallon ( 4.4 Liter ) tank supplied with the tonearm. My recent addition was in fact a 25 liter ( not 5 liter as previously reported ) tank. The improvement in SQ was not subtle. Over the weekend I added an additional 20 liter tank in series. The improvement continued. 

I have been listening to a Wayne Shorter record, Adam's Apple, as a reference throughout this couple of weeks. It was recorded in 1966-67, the third album after Speak No Evil, and it contains the classic Shorter composition, Footprint. With each additional surge tank, the soundstage became more vivid,  Herbie Hancock's piano playing was more enveloped, more 3-dimensional. Jazz at the pawnshop, an album I have owned for decades finally came alive. The live venue in the background with broken glasses and shouting waiters, was recreated with increase micro-dynamics.

After two days of listening, I decided to add fillers in the surge tanks. While I did buy cotton balls, I actually used crumbled paper balls instead. I felt the crumbled paper balls are more irregular, thus better at disrupting air fluctuation and smoothing out the air flow.  What the added fillers did was to 'smoothed' out the sounstage even more , giving a more relaxed music presentation. On Shorter's Adam's Apple, Shorter's sax was always a bit forward. But with the addition of the filler balls, the sax blended more into the soundstage and the music emerged more from a single fabric. That's what I heard anyway.

I am going to leave it as is more now and enjoy the increased level of music playback. But I continued to be amazed by this humble tonearm, and this seemingly minor tweak yielding such enormous sonic benefit!

Glad it worked for you! We're all in this together.

Thanks, Terry! Your surge tank foray was the inspiration.

I read recently a Terminator owner in Hong Kong who uses a 50 liter tank with a Hi Blow 20 series pump. And he uses a smaller, 5 liter, tank in series, before connecting to the tonearm. The total volume of his surge tanks is close to what I have, though I feel that breaking the tanks into smaller piece may help in smoothing out the air fluctuation more. 

As VTA / SRA adjustment can be done on the fly, I did a bit more study. I am finding that with almost all records, I am adjusting VTA within a 3.5 - 4 mm range. Given that the pivot to stylus length is approx. 85 mm, the height adjustments translate to a 2 - 2.5 degree angle difference. I am slowly getting a feel for the thickness of the records, and where the optimal VTA should fall for that perfectly dialed in sound. And no two record is dialed in with the same setting which means no two record is cut quite the same. I am of the opinion that there is no magic 92 degree rake angle that very cartridge should be tracking.