New 55,000 Euro tonearm

@dover 

i've owned a few unipivots; many years ago (late 90's, into 2001) i owned a couple of Graham arms; the 1.5 and the 1.5tc. they were a bit wobbly. never owned a Phantom or Graham after that.

i've owned 2 Durand Telos unipivots, and a Durand Kairos uni-pivot; both designs which use a side azimuth bridge to steady it. there was an art to setting up these particular arms in terms of degrees of tightness of the bridge and the whole balance. the Sapphire Telos was an amazing arm, still is. one of the very best arms i've owned. maybe the ultimate mechanical uni-pivot. with the bridge the Durand's were not at all wobbly. but not plug and play easy to optimize.

on the FCL, with the field coil turned on, you can push from the side and it will deflect, and smoothly spring back. but zero wobble. the feel when putting side pressure on is more a slight resistance but controlled. whatever is actually happening and however it works, the result is ultimate (in my experience) standard setting information and musicality.

Aside from the fact that the strength of the magnetic field and its orientation with respect to the unipivot would or could make a big difference, why is the FCL superior to the best iteration of the Graham Phantom tonearm(s), which use permanent magnets to stabilize the bearing? I bring this up only for discussion; I have no preformed opinion, because I’ve used neither tonearm.

let’s just say that a passive magnet has performance potential; but a sufficiently engineered powered magnetic field has an apparently much higher effect on performance.

i’m not claiming any particular effect of the field coil. but i am saying that this arm performs beyond any i’ve heard. and then try to connect the dots as to why.

Mike, I do not doubt your testimony on iota.  I am just thinking out loud about the two kinds of magnet and why would an electromagnet outperform a permanent magnet in this application.  And of course, there can be any number of other reasons (such as field strength and field orientation for two examples or elements of construction totally unrelated to magnetism) why the FCL might outperform the Phantom (for one example of unipivot that uses permanent magnets).  Because in the end the "field coil" is here used as a magnet, so far as I can tell from the outside looking in.

Dear @mikelavigne : "" what do i mean by fast? i’m hearing considerably more information, ""

First the signal information is what each cartridge it self can pick up and depends that the alignment set up between tonearm/cartridge be accurated and that the resonance frequency be inside de ideal frequency range.

You/we can’t get more information from the LP recorded grooves what we can get is a different kind of presentation of all those recorded information.

It’s not easy to translate in objective terms our subjective appreciations. You said " fast " but the word could be not the rigth one because what the stylus tip movements pick-up and translate in an electrical signal pass directly to the the tonearm wire does not matters in which tonearm the cartridge is mounted that path does not changes and in a 12" the signal can’t be faster than in a 9"-10.5" tonearm that have shorter wires.

So, what really happens ( to me ) is the FCL presentation is different and certainly with a signature/colorations ( developed distortions ) that are what you are perceiving. Many of those colorations comes from the kind and levels the tonearm hnadled the developed distortions and especially with signal transients information.

It’s a true departure for what you was accustom to with your other tonearms?, I could say not a real departure but something different that at this moment like you more that what you listened with your other tonearms.

Remember that I posted that unipivots " looks " as has or puts " aliveness " to what we listen through it vs non-unipivots tonearm designs? that kind of aliveness is part of unipivots and maybe is what you are translating as " fast " but not more information.

Certainly I can be wrong with all those but today it's my take about your susbjective explanation.

Btw, I own the original Grieg London recording.

R.