A very interesting discussion indeed. Arms definitely matter. In my opinion a lot. I am amused by Raul's comment that all arms should have silver wire. Raul is a man who knows his stuff and several years ago, when I first bought my SL1200GAE he advised me to rewire the arm with silver wire and he gave me a source for the kit to do it. So I did. And of course it made a noticeable difference. Be careful what you wish for. I didn't like the difference and had to re-wire the arm again using Litz wire, which is still in it now. Personal preference. At that time I still had a heavily KAB modded SL1200 which had a similar arm, but aluminum. The G series arms are magnesium. The latter are much better, due to superior damping. Damping is important as has been discussed in this thread. In a vintage system in a second home I have a turntable with two arms: SME Series II and Series III. These work well with various Shure V-15s and older Ortofons among others. It is essential to match arm with cartridge. Years ago I had a Tri-planar, but tired of it. The absolute worst arm in my experience was the AR, sorry if that offends someone. I worked in a high end hifi retail from approximately 1970 to 1980 and set up hundreds of TTs during that time and of course ever after.
Comparison of sonic qualities of some tonearms
I’m relatively new to the world of vinyl, listening seriously for probably only 2 years. Of course, many big picture items (e.g. turntable, phono stage, cartridges) are discussed extensively on this forum, but I haven’t seen much discussion comparing different tonearms. I would be interested to hear about different people’s experiences with different tonearms, mentioning the audible advantages and disadvantages of each tonearm, realizing that there is no perfect sound, although from what I read about others’ experiences, SAT tonearms may come closest, albeit at a very high price.
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Bill, No one is saying that the tonearm does not matter. For myself, I am saying that the tonearm matters, but we can only know the tonearm by mating it with a variety of cartridges. In doing so, over time, one can make a few judgements, but you/we can never get to the point of saying "this tonearm has no sound of its own". That's just not even a good question. You can get to the point of saying that with this or that cartridge, I prefer this tonearm over that or those tonearm(s). Furthermore, as a scientist, I would caution against making correlations between auditory phenomena and structural elements of audio components, as in ..."The G series arms are magnesium. The latter are much better, due to superior damping." The magnesium tonearm of the G series Technics probably is much better than the tonearm on the older SL1200 series, but it would take a lot of experimentation to know why and how. Sorry to pick on you to make this point, but I see this tendency over and over again in posts on this website. By the way, Raul really likes the silver Litz tonearm wire marketed by Audio Note, as do I. So there is a Litz wire he would have supported. |
Dear @billstevenson : Sorry for your disappoint that time and what I gave you was not the silver Audio Note but the silver Zavfino ( I think ? ? ? ) that I experienced too and that it does not likes everyone ( I like it over any cooper wires that I tested over time. ):
4Litz3Ag Pure Silver Tonearm Rewire - ZavfinoUSA
R.
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