Refurbish Fidelity Research Tonearms

Not the right thread to talk about EPA or Reed design. I just tried to say that Ruby Ball Bearings is the whole different concept and it has nothing to do with FR 64s. Those arm are completely different, but both can be used with MM or MC, technics also made MC cartridges for their best tonearms (but they are not a low compliance MC, of course).

Thank you Chak, appreciate the correction.Hahaha Nandric, Luis at your disposal, very useful your duality.

I don't want to hijack the thread, but how good is FR54 compared to FR64? FR64 and of course FR66 are a way out of my budget. However there are many FR54s available at around $300.

You’d better find Lustre GST-801 tonearm, cheaper than 64s or 64fx, but this Lustre is excellent tonearm and already have VTA base on the fly (while for FR this base alone is $1500 secondhand). 

I posted these comments on another thread for Nandric , but pertains to this thread, 

dover1,477 posts07-10-2021 12:37am

@nandric

The bearings in the FR64S used for horizontal motion of the arm are conventional roller bearings, purchaseable off the shelf to any spec. - eg Abec 7,9 etc

The issue most folk ignore is that the load on the roller bearings used for horizontal motion of the arm is sideways. If you can picture the roller bearings with a pipe on the inside and a larger pipe on the outside, one pipe spins within another.

In the tonearm application, the load is 90 degrees to the direction that the bearings are actually designed for. In other words the weight of the tonearm is pushing down on the roller bearing assembly sideways.

So over time wear is more likely as seen in the Syntax video.

Wear in the vertical motion bearings is less likely becuase they are used in a correct orientation.

If you look at the Kuzma 4Point the horizontal motion is achieved by using a unipivot single point ( as regards load ), instead of roller bearings incorrectly used. It is a much better system.

This misuse of roller bearings for horizontal motion in tonearms occurs in most tonearms, eg SME etc.

I would never use grease or oil on a precision roller bearing.

You were quite correct with regard to Ikeda preferring iron bearings, he regarded jewelled bearings ( synthetic jewels in most instances ) to be brittle sounding with his preferred low compliance cartridges.

With regard to the grease used on the vertical tracking force spring, sure using the right viscosity is probably important. Personally I have swiss laboratory grade grease used for watches/clocks on my shelf, dont use it. There are better.

If one wanted to live dangerously then one would remove the spring completely from the FR64 and disable the dynamic vtf adjuster and just use static balance. This would remove resonances from the FR64 inherent in the spring assembly and probably improve the sound - I have done this with other arms and heard improvements. The only caveat is that this may not be optimal for very some low compliance cartridges.

Both Jonathan Carr and I use a combination of static and dynamic balnce on the FR64. In my case I believe it reduces the resonance in the spring mechanism by having a small amount of dynamic balance, rather than any argument about static versus dynamic balance in setting vertical tracking force.