TONEARM DAMPING : DAMPED OR NOT ? ? USELESS ? ? WELCOMED ? ?

This came from a PU3 reviewer:

" with a particularly lucid and organic midband. Whereas arms like the Zeta give epic, grandstanding performances of every record you play on them, the PU3 is altogether more subtle and cohesive. Bass is lighter and slower with less energy and articulation..""

Organic? that does not exist in live MUSIC at near field and that bass range?

Anyway, pun is not intened but only to put " things " in the rigth perspective for all of us.

Btw, :  ""  There are many who will say that if damping improves the performance of a tonearm cartridge combination then it is either a poorly designed arm or a tonearm cartridge mismatch. """

Those " many " are all wrong, have extremely low knowledge levels on the subject and obviously what speaks is their ignorance level.

R.

@atmasphere  : You are whom posted what I stated in the OP:

"""  " This is the one thing about the Triplanar that I don't like. I never use the damping trough...... I imagine someone might have a use for it; I removed the troughs on my Triplanars; its nice to imagine that it sounds better for doing so. "

Other audiophiles with out knowing that was you whom posted in this thread posted something like: "t that person with the Triplanar does not knows what is losting down there "

You are worst than mijostyn because he has not the opportunity to test in his tonearm the silicon trough. You had it and still have and you NEVER used ! ! ! ? ? ?  Go figure and you follow posting in the main thread subjects.

With all respect and in this cartridge/tonearm issue you are almost a rookie and you need to learn a lot before you can try through your posts to help us. Unfortunatelly  at this moment you can't do it no matter what and you don't need to answer this post.

R.

Raul,
Congratulations for picking another fascinating and controversial topic for discussion.  I intended to sit it out because there is no single solution to your puzzle, but decided to chime in with my opinion based on some measurements and experiences with two different set ups.  First set up:  Arm, SME Series III.  Cartridge, Shure V15 Type V MR.  Test Record used, Shure ERA IV.  I know you are aware, but for the record this was a high compliance cartridge and a low mass tonearm, considered state of the art back in the day by Gordon Holt among many others.  It still sounds very good mounted on a VPI HW-19.  Anyway in setting it up first without damping fluid in the trough, and then with damping fluid in the trough there was very little difference in tracking ability leaving the VTF at a nominal 1 gram with the little damped brush down as per Shure's instructions.   With the brush up, the damping fluid in the tray might have made a slight difference, but really not enough to get excited about in my opinion.   What did make a clear difference, however, was that little brush, stabilizing the arm and improving tracking in all tests.
Sometime later I played with fluid levels in the trough and found that it made no discernible difference until too much fluid was added.  I determined too much fluid to be approximately half full for the Series III trough.  Too much fluid made the sound thicker somehow and noisier.
Second set up, I added a damping trough from KAB to my SL1200GAE, a SoundSmith Hyperion made no audible difference, although using the Ortofon Test Record, it did track a bit better.  I have not experimented with fluid levels on this set up, but left the level below half full.
This experience is not enough to draw broad conclusions from, although I believe Shure demonstrated conclusively that a damped brush on the end of any tonearm can stabilize the arm and aid tracking.  I will go further and opine that this would be so for high and low compliance cantilevers, low to high mass tonearms, and would be particularly efficacious as tonearm length increases.  Again, for emphasis, that is my opinion only and is not based on experimentation.

Bill

Yes Bill, all that makes sense. Basically damping can be useful with cartridge tonearm mismatches or if a particular combination has a very high Q. Using a Kuzma 4 Point (the 11" one) horizontal damping made no audible difference with the Lyra Kleos and Ortofon Windfeld Ti. This is three people listening. Both cartridges have a compliance in and around 14 um/mN and are well matched to this arm. It would have been nice to evaluate this with an oscilloscope but one was not available then. I have one now but my current arm and the ones I lust after do not have nor do they need damping. The Friend with the Zuzma 4 Point lives on the other side of the state so this experiment is not likely to happen in the near future.
Rauliruegas, the Syrinx PU 3 was a top arm in it's day and it still has a big fan base. There are certainly arms today that are better.
I'm sure you love listening to music and perhaps you have wonderful hearing. But what you hear in your own personal evaluations may be interesting but it has ZERO scientific validity. It is only your opinion which I think you have made perfectly clear in spite of the language barrier.