Another “How to choose an arm” question

@holmz

Well, you already ’hit’ on it really.

I also have a SOTA (and yes, IMO, it’s a keeper) with A knife edge Jelco S850 MKII, and a Soundsmith MIMC cart. I’ve been toying with the idea of going MC with a Benz cart. I know some don’t like removable head shells, but I like mine, as I can swap in my mono cart, or another, or a MM/MI to MC easily, without the need for two arms. I also would love two arms, but I’m not getting rid of my SOTA.

The Soundsmith and Benz, both being low compliance carts, work well with the Jelco 850 which is right around 13-14g effective mass. A higher compliance cart probably would not work as well. Both my Soundsmith carts are a compliance of 10. Most Benz are 15 that I am looking at.

Thus, if you are looking at a very light effective mass arm (5-8g as example) your cart selection will be limited to higher compliance carts (20-28+/-g). On the other hand, if you are looking at medium to high mass arms, you will be limited to lower to medium compliance carts (10-22+/-). There are many who simply love low mass arms, and I get it per the carts they desire.

Now, this is simply ’in general’. Weight of the cart, etc. also comes into play.

Here is a good site which you can input many variables to see if a particular arm and cart will be acceptable together:

http://www.mh-audio.nl/Calculators/RF.html

My view is from a relative ’newby’ getting back into vinyl over the last few years. I’m sure others will have views with more years being active in vinyl. I had put my rig away over 25 years ago before getting back into it recently.

Just get a good quality arm regardless. Don’t skimp here if looking for something new.

Get a lowish mass tonearm and add mass as needed to suit any cartridge. Then choose a tonearm based on other qualities such as bearings, ease of VTA and VTF adjustment, etc. Don’t overthink it.

Dear @holmz : Look for no unipivot designs, no matters what. Even that you like stay away of knife bearing designs.  Read carefully the tonearm manufacturer site information, is very important. Look for well damped tonearms. Medium mass is fine. Reading reviews from TAS or STPH could help too.

Now, even that your cartridges or any cartridge can be well matched about the resonance frequency ideal range same cartridges in different tonearm sounds a little different. Each tonearms it self vibrates/resonates different and are damped in different way but any good choice that you decide will performs really good. Today there are only a few tonearms that you could say: this is a bad tonearm. There are many tonearm manufacturerers.

Each one of us tonearm opinions come from our first hand experiences through our room/system that never is near the one you own, so be very carefully here and if you have near tonearm retailers then go to listen it and the same is you have audio friends near your place and I hope you already definied very specific targets for your system that can match it according your MUSIC/sound priorities  You need this kind of reference and when listening to other systems or even in yours you need to know exactly what to look for in LP tracks to really know you are near your targets:

https://www.kuzma.si/tonearms