Phantom Supreme to 4Point-14?

Kuzma’s rationale for the very high effective mass of the Safir essentially boils down to the notion that any high end modern TT will be sufficiently isolated from very low frequency disturbances, like footfalls, by its isolation mechanisms. Therefore the low resonant frequency that results from such a high effective mass is not a problem. IOW, violate the 8 to 12 Hz rule for resonance at your leisure. I’m not averse to his thesis. But I am averse to the cost of the Safir, based on my research into the cost of sapphire tubes like the one used in the Safir. You can buy one for less than $50.

@mijostyn , thanks, great stuff and much food for thought.

I hear you and lewm about VTA and I really want it to be so. Life would be so much easier setting and forgetting. But every time I try that method it only sounds good on the record weight I set it VTA at. My grand experiment not to change VTA yesterday lasted 10 minutes. I set the Graham at level on an apprx 160g LP, put on a 120g, and sat back with the committed intention of not changing VTA. I thought the sound was unacceptable, and in the ways I expected. I’d blame the Graham but I have 2 and a couple of Jelco Ortofons and an SME, all active on 3 turntables, and the same thing happens with all of them. Maybe I’m projecting. Maybe I have set up issues elsewhere that reveal themselves only when VTA is imprecisely set. Maybe I’m just a Pavlovian dupe of the VTA tower industry.

I have thought about returning to the Triplanar, which I owned for many years and ultimately found to be colored toward warmth. Perhaps the newish option for silver wire would eliminate this quibble.

@lewm , that’s interesting about the sapphire tube cost, and I agree about the arm’s price. Footfall resonance is not a concern. My SP10R weighs 135 lbs and sits on a Minus-K, and my floor is a concrete slab under glued-down wood flooring.

@wrm57 , Excellent. The MinusK is the best platform. 

It is impossible to know exactly what is going on with your turntable. I was never crazy about unipivot arms. What are you using to align the cartridge? 

I have good alignment tools, accumulated over the years: a Wally dedicated to Grahams, an older Wally Universal that I use for my 9-in Ortofon, a UNI-Pro that I like best for my 12-in Ortofon, a MintLP for my 12-in SME, and a smattering of others I don’t use. The Wally’s have always been my favorites. And I recently picked up a WallyVTA, which surprised me with how much better it made things.

The main reason for this thread is b/c I’ve started to sour a bit on my Graham Phantoms. Both of them exhibit a frustrating hypersensitivity to how the counterweight is set. I don’t mean VTF, which I set carefully to the 100th of a gram. I mean the tension on the knurled knob that moves the counterweight along its track. Keep in mind that the Grahams use a screw-track to propel the counterweight toward or away from the bearing housing. The weight is slid along the track by an accordion-like mechanism that expands or contracts. I recently discovered that the slightest pressure in either direction on the controlling knob at the end of the track (and therefore the armtube) will emphasize or diminish HF info to an astonishing degree. I’m not talking about enough pressure to change the VTF at all, measured, again, to the 100th g. I mean just pressuring it, with no discernible movement of the knob at all. And pressure in either direction has obvious and predictable sonic consequences.

I surmise that this pressure slightly changes the track-screw tension, or perhaps loads or unloads the accordion-structure (almost like a spring), which changes the resonance of the arm tube/bearing housing assembly by some small but easily audible amount. In other words, the decoupling is perhaps inadequate. This affects both my Supreme and III. Maybe the Elite is immune, I have no idea.

Perhaps I was unaware of this until my system became refined enough to expose it after many years with these tonearms. I just happened upon it accidentally while adjusting VTF. But once you test for it intentionally, it becomes incontrovertible. Changes in damping amounts within the bearing housing don’t noticeably affect this phenomenon. So I’m left with the sense that I’m not sure when I'm hearing these tonearms at neutral, and therefore when I’m hearing the cartridge rather than the tonearm, and that is frustrating me.