@rauliruegas @mijostyn out of curiosity what do you consider great arms say in the 5 - 10k range? Kuzma 4Point? 4POINT9?
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To me there is so many variables to make a great tonearm. As you all say there is external vibrations finding it's way up to the tonearm, and there is bearing chatter in the tonearm and probably other unwanted resonances and at the end of the wand/rod there are we mounting firmly/rigid a pickup/cartridge.. so it can pickup all of those problems that the tonearm is serving it. Then we want to solve the problems with constructing the wand/rod so it will dampen/isolate and eat up resonances and vibrations. With a lot of engineering and the sofisticated data modeling and printout in fancy rainbow colors. Impressing and with a impressive price tag then it is good stuff and nobody can say that it is a "gizmo". A cartridge is approximately 7g to 10g. Mass for a stylus and cantilever, typically the best cartridges have about 0.5 mg or less.
So the cartridge body has 14 to 20 times or more mass than the stylus + cantilever have. Then the stylus is moving back and forth in the grove and register all the "wiggles"/information on the grove walls that are so tiny (micron). If you look at the stylus while playing a LP you will not be able to see those super tiny wiggles with your eyes. So we understand that a low mass stylus and cantilever in comparison to the cartridge that not even we are able to see that it is moving it is even not movements (micron) side to side it is 45°upwards.
Then the stylus and cantilever is working against VTF that is coming from above and the inertia of the mass of cartridge (+tonearm effective mass) that is far more in grams than the VTF that is the smaller of them and still is enough. When we realize that only the mass of the cartridge is more than enough for the lateral forces and the VTF is there for the vertical force. So bear with me now and think outside of the box and the common solutions, we want the cartridge to be "free floating in the air" but it needs to be attached also in the same time. The tonearm is just holding the cartridge so the stylus has all the right angels, VTF and so on. While doing that we get all the other down sides that mentioned above. What if we isolate the issues that comes from the tonearm while keeping the stylus setup that the tonearm provide.
There is where the funk houdini is coming into the picture when it isolate the bad things that comes with using a tonearm, and the cartridge itself on the other side of the houdini. As seen in a short clip in Michael Fremer video at 13:50. We see that Arthur is trying to explain and show what his different products including houdini is trying to solve in practice. More or less the same issues that other conventional tonearms also trying to do with their wand/rod. It seams to be a hard and expensive way to solve the issues that the tonearm is giving the cartridge. (But please don't tell the customer that we don't need to fasten/ground firmly the cartridge to the tonearm and transmitt all the issues from the tonearm as they were one homogen piece. Then we get out of business. If they knew that.) But it is a total different approach for solving the issues. Funk firm Arthur Khoubesserian It is great to have a guy like Arthur that are thinking outside of the box and coming out with new and many different solutions for old problems and issues we have with traditional solutions.
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https://parttimeaudiophile.com/2020/09/27/glanz-mh-124s-premium-tonearm-review/ or stretch to a used Durand Tosca. that would be the smart play. |
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