TONEARM DAMPING : DAMPED OR NOT ? ? USELESS ? ? WELCOMED ? ?

@rauliruegas , It's got about 50 hours on it. The signal to noise ration is more a function of the phono stage. If I had a Seta L20 it would be dead quiet. Now with the system set above 90 dB I can just hear a hiss. With the MSL the system is dead quiet to max volume. It has probably 10 dB more gain in current mode than the MC. 1.5 ohms vs 6 ohms. Because the bass is better in current mode with everything I have used so far I think you would really like it. 

The damping trays might be useful in a situation were the arm is too heavy for the cartridge but it is much better to match the cartridge to the arm. I try to get as close to 8 Hz as I can. As far as bearing go they have to be ultimately smooth and as low in friction as possible. You can tell how good and arm is by setting it to neutral balance so that it floats horizontally and just blow very lightly on it and it should respond instantly and come to a very gradual halt. The abruptness at the end should be ever so slight.  If you blow on the head shell from the top thearm will do one of two things. It will either gradually stop at a new position (neutral balance) or it will oscillate up and down and slowly come to a stop (stable balance)  

If you have not gotten them yet you should get the WallySkater and Reference. They really are great tools and make set up much easier. 

@rauliruegas 

You say you have very good damped arms and have read the Bugge thesis i sent to you. That being said have you heard the townshend in action?

The original excaliber arm and the current one (which is custom made to order) could also be factored into the equation - I understand thee original arm doesn't have a fully fixed pivot point so to speak and floats in silicone - I might be wrong.

When you say you damp the arm - for most it is:

a. a silicone trough near the base like you get for Moerchs and SME's. Arguably pointless because the spurious resonance does not get killed at source. Liken it to a long car wishbone - the damper and springs are mounted closer to the wheel due to the better control it provides to the forces

b. you damp with tape or a head-shell attachment - the spurious energy remains and gets transferred down the arm. It is mechanically brilliant and effective.

Enough of the theory - buy a Townshend ROCK of any iteration then use your ears.  

The original Excalibur arm was plagued with bearing issues. I know this because I used to sell the Elite Rock's. I still somewhere have a hand written 2 page letter from Max Townsend on how to fix them. The fix was not permanent though - there was a design flaw in the arm bearing.

Funnily enough for a few months I ran my Eminent Technology air bearing arm on the Rock with no damping and it was excellent - far better than with the Excalibur/trough.

Dear @lohanimal  :  You are rigth that perhaps I need to experience in my system the Townshend one but  my point is what said the tonearm patent that whith other words I understand like this:

" different damping levels at frequency ranges with the trough at the cartridge position and at the same time allowing for " free movement " at the cartridge stylus  "

Both actions can't live together or is dampened or exist that critical and extremely important FREE MVEMENT but not both together.

As everything in audio exist trade offs that I'm not discovery yet in my well damped tonearms with out the trough. Till today in all frequency ranges with the " free movement " Ithe system achieved a not tiny improvement and the better of those improvement started with the low bass that's the one range that puts/colored all what in any room/system we are listening.

Now, I gone from 500Kc silicon density to zero silicon damping. I know that I need try something from 10K and from there make more tests and this will take some weeks or months to have a conclusion because is not to easy to clean up the tray to change new density silicon along that my test proccess is a little with long time.

R.

In reading through this thread after so many months of its existence, it seems to me that most commenters are mixing together two different phenomena. The first is the resonant frequency that we calculate from tonearm effective mass and cartridge compliance. This resonance we want to lie in the range 8 to 12Hz, or very close to it. This resonance will not "happen" unless vibrational energy in the range of the resonant frequency is fed into the "system", defining the system as the tonearm/cartridge and anything attached to the tonearm or cartridge. Energy at or near that resonant frequency will excite the unwanted response. The second kind of resonance would be that which results from playing music, where a wide range of audible frequencies (but almost never in the range of 8 to 12Hz) is constantly being fed into the system due to the contact between stylus and groove where the frequencies are encoded and due also to any source of acoustic feedback in the listening room. Seems to me it is this latter source of resonance(s) that we want to control or eliminate, so the conventional matching of tonearm and cartridge based on effective mass and compliance is not so primary in this pursuit.

As a result, you could have a tonearm/cartridge that are well matched based on the equation that predicts "resonant frequency", but the combination may sound bad due to the excitation of undamped or inadequately damped resonances caused by higher audio frequencies. You could also have a tonearm/cartridge that are a bad match based on the standard equation based on tonearm effective mass and cartridge compliance but sounds wonderful (so long as it is isolated from the sub-audio frequencies that excite the inherent resonance), because the tonearm is well damped or otherwise built to avoid resonances excited at audio frequencies.