Gimbal vs unipivot tonearms

I might add that different arms behave differently.  Not all gimballed arms will be as good as the latest (last) Jelco, probable some better.  The JMW-12 arm is an early VPI design, much improved over the years but still better than many.

At the end of the day a tonearm and cartridge in combination is ideally a pure vibration receiver. Every movement of the cantilever caused by its travel through the grooves is ideally converted to electrical signal unimpeded by the tonearm or any limitations of the cartridge. What happens when a cantilever is pushed laterally in one direction and another only damped by the underhung counterbalances employed by a typical unipivot? The answer is simple-vibrations are no longer being received intact and instead are compromised. And the grooves in which bass sounds are embedded cause the most lateral travel and are the most compromised. But then everything is likely compromised more than they have to be. The VPI unipivot design was very poor. So why be surprised that VPI is now slowly but surely converting to gimbal designs?

@rauliruegas , that is an insane video! What a great set up. He jury rigged the whole thing.
 It was not a unipivot arm but it was very interesting to see the torsional deflection when he skipped grooves.

Darn, I thought I was the only one who thought the VPI arm was trash.
fsonicsmith, you are stating opinion as fact. You can't do that because it freaks out a lot of insecure people. Don't do it again;-)

I know VPI is now pushing gimbal arms, but they are WAY overpriced, and they are made on a 3D printer - I guess out or some kind of plastic, and I saw in a previous discussion that they actually bend sometimes during shipping if it gets hot, and they tell their customers to use a hair dryer to bend them back - I kid you not. They also say they'll replace them if you want. $4K to boot!

The unipivots that bounce around are definitely a PITA to use, set up, you name it. I hear they make nice tables though.....and they started out making bases for Denon tables.