Does the Eminent Technology 2.5 arm work well with the Transcriptors Reference turntable?

The late Brooks Berdan---well known in the hi-fi business, and referred to as Mr. Analog---probably mounted and set up more arms & tables than anyone else in history. He was one of Bruce Thigpen’s first dealers, and mounted a LOT of the original ET arm on his then (1980’s) favorite table---the Oracle Delphi.

Brooks---having worked in the race car field before entering the hi-fi business---recognized the Oracle had a non-optimum mass distribution in it’s floating subchassis, and came up with a mod to eliminate that fault (Oracle eventually incorporated Brooks’ idea into the Delphi). He may have noticed the Oracle’s mass distribution problem because of the way the moving mass of the ET arm affected the subchassis suspension of the table; It was inherently unstable if left stock.

When the TNT was introduced by VPI, Brooks favoured it for use with the ET arm, as the TNT provided a much more stable platform for the ET---higher in mass and having a stiffer spring suspension. Brooks sold that ET/TNT combo for years, installing one in the system Bill Johnson had in his winter home in Palm Desert, about an hour-and-a-half hour drive east of Brooks’ shop in Monrovia.

Both Bill and Brooks are gone, and the TNT is history, but the Eminent Technology arm lives on! 

Brooks continued to race cars after he got into hi end audio. His widow runs his shop Brooks Berdan Ltd. still in Monrovia at the same location. His son Brian Berdan started his own hi end shop Audio Element in Pasadena California. Bruce Thigpen is building an ET arm for me as we speak which Brian will install in an Oracle. So it's back to the future.

On Dover's advice, I got a Moerch arm for the Transcriptors. I have the Moerch. Waiting on the Transcriptors to be built. Will use the Van den Hull Calibri Grand Master. Dutch needle, Danish arm, English turntable.

Hi @chowkwan. Sheila Berdan has closed the Brooks Berdan Ltd. shop in Monrovia, and will soon be relocating to Northern Washington State. I bought a fair amount of my hi-fi from Brooks, and my pair of Eminent Technology LFT-8b's (a great, somewhat overlooked, hi-fi bargain) from Sheila after Brooks' passing.

In the meantime, for those of you in Southern California, Brian Berdan's shop in Pasadena is THE place to go for all your record player needs (electronics and loudspeakers too ;-). Brian is not just an excellent technician, but also a very swell fella. I've known him since he was a little kid, and we drank beer together when the band I assembled for the occasion played at Brooks' 50th birthday party. Good times! I know Brian misses Brooks more than anybody.

Mijo, you tend to argue using only your own carefully selected facts and beliefs as support. I am not qualified to comment on the ET tonearm because I’ve never owned one, although every time I’ve heard it, it seemed excellent. I am only focusing on your repeated insistence that the effective mass of a tonearm must be the same in both the vertical and horizontal planes. Else performance at bass frequencies will suffer. As you know, all Dynavector designs deliberately result in high effective mass in horizontal motion. Horizontal motion is also magnetically damped. Many other pivoted tonearms are similarly conceived. You might want to read a Dynavector owners manual to appreciate why their engineers think thi is a good thing. As a long time user of the DV505 with a wide variety of cartridges, I can tell you the DV produces particularly excellent, well defined bass frequencies.

@lewm 

@mijostyn almost sounds like the crowd over at ASR.  He reads the specs, and decides what it's going to sound like.