Gimbal vs unipivot tonearms

@mijostyn  Air bearing arms are not worth talking about?? I wouldn't state that to any of the many owners of the Eminent Tech arm...an arm that I still feel can compete with some of the best available today.

@mijostyn- "What makes you believe the Tact does not go below 20 Hz?"

    I MEANT* to say: I cut off at 20Hz, in the program.   

    Lower would be a waste of of amplifier power, in my current room, given the dimensions and my phono pre has a subsonic filter, that can't (easily) be defeated.    It's 6dB/oct, so: affects freqs, somewhat higher than a steeper slope would.    

     Kinda between a rock and a hard place, though: if I ever have a larger space, I'm certain to address the issue.

                             *A consequence of Old-Timer's Disease and a brain-fart!

  



    

@daveyf 

@mijostyn  Air bearing arms are not worth talking about?? I wouldn't state that to any of the many owners of the Eminent Tech arm...an arm that I still feel can compete with some of the best available today.

Agree - and despite the high effective horizontal mass I ran a high compiance Shure V15Vmr in my ET2 for 10 years non stop ( with the stabiliser brush removed ), and the original cantilever was still straight as a die after all that time.

Unipivots ironically have the most rigid and free bearing due to the single point.

Gimbal bearings have much higher stiction than unipivots but are more stable.

I have all three arm types - gimbal, unipivot & tangential air bearing.
At the end of the day there are pros and cons with each type, and those that argue one over the other as an absolute do not understand the trade offs inherent in each of the various options.

Dear @dover  : ""  do not understand the trade offs inherent in each of the various options. ""

Agree but when you have to choose in between you will choose according what those trade-offs tells you and the ones that goes in better way to your specific MUSIC/audio priorities.

Like you Ihave first hand experiences with all that kind of tonearms you name it ( I owned the ET2. ) and my final choice is to gimball pivoted ones not unipivots or LT.
For me the gimball ones are way better than unipivots and this does not means I don't understand about trade-offs because I do.

R.

@rodman99999 , Thanx for the info. I really like the Tact 2.2x. I love the dynamic loudness function  but, time and tech moves on and I am debating going for a Trinnov Amethyst. If I decide not I will look into upgrading the power supply. I had analog input boards but the right channel went south so I got a Benchmark ADC 1 with which I am very happy. Using outboard DACs gets complicated when needing four channels. Fortunately, the Tact DACs are excellent with a signal to noise ratio of 125 dB. By all means get yourself a bigger room:-)

@lewm , I can't think of any air bearing arms back then. I was not impressed with the Goldmond. I thought it a big waste of money. It was on the right path but the tech to pull it off was not available back then Rabco or not. It is now but at stupid expense given the demand. There is a German company making a belt driven carriage drive straight line tracker whose error is vanishingly low and the actual arm is a rather standard 2 axis affair. Horizontal and vertical effective masses are close unlike an air bearing arm. I'm sure it performs well but it is over $100K. The Schroder LT is a far better solution using the energy supplied by friction to power the arm. You should download the patent. It is the only way you can really understand what he designed. Reed did the same thing with the 5T but used a very low speed motor to power it costing twice as much as the LT.
The CB is a great design but the LT is brilliant. 

Air bearing arms and Clearaudio's design are defective from the start. They oscillate horizontally at low frequencies. Maybe you could dampen this out somehow but I have not seen anyone do this effectively. The suspended stylus has to move this mass along one way or the other, frictionless bearing and all. Swirling air currents around a cartridge are not a good idea either. 

GO MAX!!!