Refurbish Fidelity Research Tonearms

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.

Thanks for the lecture Dover. It may be the case that the most
deed not understand the ''technicality'' about berings but it
may save ''some'' $  800  or more depending from chosen wire.
With added + $ 800 one may be forced to chose burial with
his FR-64/66 because there is no chance to sell the ''precious''
for this kind of money. Contrary to general beliefs ''saving'' is
still an virtue. Anyway for our childern . BTW I noticed your
warning for Allaers ''golden (thin) coil wire''. I own one and am
not willing to risk sucide if those will  burn by wrong use. I already
have much difficulty to ''drive'' them with my 4 stages amplification
possibility. They are btw less attractive  to look at than my Kiseki Agaat.  So it is mixed blessing to own one.

Dear @dover : As you and other gentlemans, years ago , I used too ( SME IV/V, FR and Ikeda tonearms. ) the VTF set up 50%-50% and sounds good but at the end and through my several tests experienses with all those tonearms the best quality sound performance appears using 100% static VTF set up.

The " best spring is no spring " specially in this application. Even at 50% that spring resonates, as you said is inherent on it.

I made tests too in my other two dynamic balanced designs: MAX282/GST-801. These ones usus no spring for that function so resonances about is not a problem but even that fact I decided to use those tonearms in static balance due that in this way the counteweigth is near the tonearm fulcrim/ bearings and gives not only better control to the tonearm work but seems to me that puts less stress to the bearings closer than far-away from there.

Obviously each one of us choose the best trade-offs to be nearest to our priorities/targets.

R.

@rauliruegas 
Yes I tend to agree, I generally prefer static balance, however I dont think the FR can be 100% static unless the spring is  removed.
As I suggested on some arms in the past I have removed springs for vtf and gained a reasonable improvement in sound quality due to the removal of resonances arising from the springs.