Graham Phantom Elite vs. AS Aquilar

Dear @wrm57  : "  the Phantom Supreme on the same same ’table--actually the same two ’tables--over the course of several years. I found the Phantom Supreme to be better--more resolving, more energetic, less colored--so I sold the Triplanar and bought a second Graham, a Phantom III. "

More resolving?, well normally the ideal tonearm must has not any " coloration "/sound by it self and are the cartridges mated with the ones with what we like it.

Certainly that your Graham tonearms and your cartridges mated very well to even your MUSIC reproduction targets and no one but you in your room/system can know if the other tonearm could be a good mates too.

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,

R.

By all means the Aquilar. The Graham is a poor value because it spends a lot of money correcting a defective bearing system. It works but at an unacceptable price. The Aquilar (10" only) is a good arm but again not the greatest value. The Reed 2G and Schroder CB are as good or better at much more acceptable pricing giving you more to spend on cartridges.   

@mijostyn , so do you find all unipivots categorically flawed or is it something in the Graham’s particular approach to unipivots that makes you say it has a defective bearing system?

@wrm57 First off, the Graham is an extremely well made arm and a good performer. It's singular problem is it's price. There are to many arms that are as good or better at 1/3rd the price. Having said that. Both Graham and Basis by virtue of their design changes admit that the basic unipivot concept is defective.

For a cartridge to perform at it's best the tonearm that it is mounted in can only have two degrees of freedom, vertical and horizontal. Unipivot arms have a third degree and that is rotationally around the tonearms long axis. Even if the arm/cartridge combination had the perfect geometry with the pivot point exactly at record level these arms are wobbly, difficult to manage and keep in adjustment. I would wager that cartridge accidents are higher with these arms. 

For the best performance the cartridge has to be held rigidly in the proper orientation over the record. The trend in modern arms as exemplified by the SAT arms, is very stiff, two axis bearing designs. Examples are the Schroder CB, Reed 2G, Kuzma 4 Point 9, the Tri planar, the Origin Live arms and the SME's. The Aquilar also is in this class but again the price is way too high for what you get. I personally do not like VTA towers. If you are jumping back and forth between cartridges that frequently you need two arms. If you are changing VTA all the time you need a tranquilizer. Set it at 93 degrees and forget it.  

What do you like, if you don't like VTA towers?  Do you like the inexact and treacherous process of finding the right VTA, holding the tonearm precisely in that selected position for dear life, and then searching for the tiny and usually weakly binding set screw which needs to be tightened down with a tool that is usually just out of your reach?  I personally hate that and would not have any tonearm that still relies on that primitive method for setting VTA.  There are a few vintage Japanese tonearms that permit setting VTA by a rotating knob, positioned over top of the vertical bearing as opposed to a side mounted tower, that moves the pivot up or down and can be fixed once a correct VTA is achieved, like the Victor 80XX series and the Technics B500 (and maybe the 100), but after that the VTA tower is the best solution in my opinion.