Tonearm adjustments on the fly

Mike Lavigne, I’ve always admired your system and your knowledge and experience. Thanks for contributing here. I’m assuming you are referring to the Durand (at least in part). I’ll look into that once again

thanks.

my room was used for some early Durand tone arm testing, so i heard the various versions, and owned the Talea and then the Talea 2, which did allow for on the fly VTA adjustment. then he developed the Telos, which was higher performance with more mechanical solidity. and now the Tosca even better. neither has on-the-fly VTA adjustment.

i also owned a Triplaner which VTA could be adjusted on-the-fly, and a number of arms bettered it in my particular system. it certainly holds it’s own among choices in it’s price range, i still like it. but it’s not the last word for sure.

hard to pin-point one feature and connect it to why another arm surpasses it. but solidity in the base and bearing tower seems to be a significant factor in ultimate performance. what does it take to engineer in VTA on-the-fly and is it a compromise somewhere?

with the Rockport it was not. but now that would be a $300k-$500k turntable with that arm. it was hugely overbuilt. but that’s what it takes at the top of the food chain. i’m not an engineer, just an observer.

YMMV.

Thanks mijostyn.
I quite agree a degree or two of VTA cannot be heard.
I was just trying to be nice and pander to Miller and others who say it can, but not in blind tests.
Fremer measures his with a microscope although his ears are aging now.
Ho hum.

I use a USB microscope also clearthinker but mostly to make sure the stylus is not way out of spec. The worse I've seen since I started using the microscope, which is a PITA by the way, was an AT cartridge. It was at 3 degrees in the wrong direction or 87 degrees. That is tracking the record.  I sent it back. The Soundsmith and Clearaudio cartridges have been very accurate and just setting the arm parallel to the record would be fine.

I have Pure Vinyl which is a Program I use to record records to the computer. It has digital RIAA correction which I have not had a chance to try because you need a phono stage that can bypass it's correction circuit. Anyway, I have recorded samples of the same record at various angles + - 2 degrees and you can AB them. I can not hear a difference on electrostatic speakers. Now we will hear that "digitizing the record changes it so you can't hear the difference" or "Your hearing probably sucks." I agree. You can't trust anyone's hearing. I do not trust my own which is why I like running these silly experiments. Digitizing the music at 24/192 is invisible. It sounds just like a turntable, warts and all.

millercarbon   excellent  

• civilized,

cultivated,

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• academic 
• (also academical),
• bookish,
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• inkhorn,
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• informed,
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• homeschooled,
• self-educated,
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• self-taught

• briefed,
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In my opinion TriPlanar is ugly industrial design while the Reed 3p is pretty elegant (remind me of DaVinci tonearm a bit).

It is, but also features the hardest metal bearings used in any tonearm made worldwide. This allows the bearings to be adjusted so there is zero play, something you can't do with a jeweled bearing (lest it crack). So it has the least chatter and sticktion (I made that word up but you know what I mean) of any arm made. So while it might not win any beauty contests, it does get the job done. Of any arm I've tried and used it comes the closest to sounding like my master tapes.