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Merry Christmas to Me.....New tonearm on the way

I got back into vinyl in the very early 2000's. Great time for buying records after buying into the perfect sound forever in the 80's. Sometime later I bought my Teres 340, which was a far reach in my pocket. Since i spent all the $$$ on a good TT, I had to buy a temporary  tonearm. Enter the Origin Live Illustrious 3. However that was 12-14 yrs ago . The TT sounds so good that I just upgraded other parts of the system without thought to the tonearm.

I have been on the hunt for a tonearm for about 6 months now. I finally pulled the trigger on a TriPlanar Mk Vii which  was just updated to the latest specs. it should be here tomorrow. Hopefully this will be the final piece of a puzzle which has taken a long time.

That said, many tweaks have been done previously to the system and more to go. My system has never sounded better. But I suspect the TriPlanar will take it up even further. But I still great respect for the OL arms

 

128x128artemus_5
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 

Smart move. In case it doesn't work out, you might not know this but Mark Baker gives full original purchase price of your old arm when buying a new one. At least he did for me. So I got to use my Conqueror almost 15 years and then bam, full money back towards the Enterprise. So you got that for a pretty nice fallback just in case. But I still have my fingers crossed for you and the TP!

artemus_5's avatar
artemus_5 OP
1,942 posts
 

@millercarbon 

I had meant to call or email you about that. But life happened and then this arm came up for sale and I grabbed it. But that is good to know. I may have bought the Conqueror if I had known it. But it's still all good. I've never had a tonearm with this many easy adjustments. I realize that is a 2 edge sword. Back ion the 80's I put a graphic equalizer in my system. After a month of constant ocd tone adjustments, I removed it and sold it. The only thing I didn't like about the OL was it's clunky adjustments.

millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 

They're extensively improved now. Even little things like the arm rest and lifter. They should add vernier marks on the VTA adjuster. Works fine, just have to DIY if you want that, which is not at all hard to do. My favorite is they added a little threaded counterweight that makes it a whole lot easier to fine tune VTF. Plus a lot of little visual style type improvements.

You are right about the sword cutting both ways. My first arm was the Graham 2.0 and it had a slew of really awesome features, most all of which I later came to realize detract from performance at least as much as they deliver. But that was Graham. There is always room to do things better, and the devil is in the details. 

Feel free to call or email any time. Love to know how this works out for you.

nrenter's avatar
nrenter
766 posts
 

That’s funny….my “temporary” tonearm on my Teres was an OL Silver (finally upgraded to an OL Enterprise after 15 years). 

artemus_5's avatar
artemus_5 OP
1,942 posts
 

@nrenter 

 

Iirc OL was one of the recommended arm for the Teres. Congratulations on the Enterprise. I kick myself for allowing one to slip by me last year. But finding info for that arm is also near impossible. Fwiw I now realize just how good the OL is. Yes, the Triplanar is a better arm in every area. But the Illustrious 3a is much closer in sound quality to the TP than it should be considering it's price.. It's easy to see why I kept it so long. Still, I'm glad I got the TP. More of everything and almost fun to setup. And that is the problem with the OL line. Anyway good hearing from you. Enjoy the TT. I'm sure the Enterprise is a fine arm. Would love to try one myself.

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