No one appears to have mentioned the sound quality with regards to AS. I find that the music sounds less restrained with no AS applied to my 12" Jelco 850 tonearms.
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- 80 posts total
@clearthinker , While the Aeroarm is the best air bearing arm design there are issues with such a short arm. VTA changes more dramatically with elevation and the vertical effective mass can not be too low or you will start getting problems in the audio range. The horizontal effective mass is still too high. To see the problem best watch your cantilever with an eccentric record. The cantilever will lead the tonearm. If you tap your turntable on the side you will see the cantilever wobble at a very low frequency. If you are determined to have tangential tracking get a Schroder LT. I promise you will never look back. @dover, Not even Eminent Technology can defeat the laws of physics. Your statement about the lateral forces being less than a properly set up pivoted arm are false, almost comically so. That is like saying it is easier to push a pickup truck than it is a shopping cart. If you really want a very cool tangential tracker get a Reed 5T. |
Let’s be clear on one issue: for all pivoted tonearms where the stylus overhangs the spindle, there IS a skating force at all times during play. So AS is not something you can choose not to believe in. The ways in which AS is created in different designs are all faulty, it’s fair to say, for reasons that have been mentioned, including the fact that skating force is applied at the stylus tip, whereas in all cases I know about AS is applied at or near the pivot. This puts a twisting force on the cantilever. Thus very short or more vertically oriented cantilevers might be advantageous. For those who say they can hear no difference with vs without AS, I have to wonder whether the tonearm has significant horizontal friction (or stiff wiring) that is acting to provide AS, because I can easily hear R channel distortion in the total absence of AS. |
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@mijostyn Simon will thank you for that endorsement. He is aware of the VTA issue. He provides very fine height adjustment if necessary on the fly with a large diameter knurled wheel operating on the arm pillar by a high geared tensioned worm and screw. Using a parallel lines protractor against the lower flat surface of the arm, its arm height can be set very quickly and precisely for each record. In fact the low effective mass of the arm works in its favour, particularly with a low mass cartridge. Tracking is very secure. Yes the working length of the arm is unusually short. Simon didn't design if for use with off-centre records or for warped records. In fact because of its low mass this arm tracks warped records that no other arm will track - they just get thrown in the air. If you find this of value. But this also demonstrates the tracking security of this set-up. if you tap any turntable hard enough the cantilever will flex under the force applied. But, all other things being equal the effect will be less than in the case of 9 inch pivoted arm with much more mass and therefore side force. And from his S7 on, Simon didn't believe in hi-mass as the best approach to isolation. I don't tap my turntable while it is playing. Thank you, but I am not in need of parallel tracking arm recommendations. I believe the Aeroarm is the best design. Period. |
- 80 posts total