Discuss The Viv Lab Rigid Arm

Will I be burned at the stake for witchcraft? I am going to buy some asbestos pants. I do own and regularly use 5 other tonearms, all of which are conventional pivoted overhung types, some that you like and some that you dislike. Your vitriol is precisely why I have kept quiet about the Viv and will go back to observing that policy. But if you ask me, I am going to say it is very good with a wide variety of cartridges. Take it or leave it. Also, I have yet to find a negative review of the Viv on the internet, and some of those reviews are written by persons with a good reputation for intelligence.

By the way, I am not aware of any negative comments on underhung tonearms voiced by either M Kelly or Dave Garretson, with whom I am quite friendly, because we both own the Atma-sphere MP1. Since you are apparently one who saves and catalogues responses by frequent posters, like myself, can you quote one of theirs to that effect?

And for the last time, I never ever said not to use a Lofgren alignment. Of course, that is what to do if you are using a pivoted overhung tonearm. That’s what I do, too. My point was (I feel like shouting) that if your cartridge has even a one degree zenith error, then you had better account for that in implementing any of the standard alignment algorithms (usually be twisting the cartridge in the headshell so that the two contact patches are perpendicular to the groove walls), because even that small error will screw up the alignment if you ignore it. (Do you get it now, theophile?) Ask Dave Slagle (an acknowledged smart guy whom you choose to ignore) about the effects of zenith error on alignment and the distortion caused by zenith error. He has evaluated it in far more detail than I.  And he demonstrated both the effect of zenith error and the cure in my home system. It was rather astonishing. Again, this latter has nothing whatever to do with the Viv tonearm, although a zenith error will also affect an underhung tonearm, albeit not as drastically.

Personally I'm not interested in pursuing the Viv, but for all the naysayers, if you find the Viv concept so egregious, why are you still running any pivot arm.

A linear tracker has 0 tracking error, no skating forces to contend with, and if accurate alignment is your primary goal, then any arm other than a linear tracking, or tangential tracking, is a failure.

Isn't the experiences acquired through long term association with using the Vinyl LP as a Source, leading to growing in understanding about Geometries, and Mechanical Function. Especially becoming mindful of the importance of the minute detail requirements for each, that when adequately addressed, do make differences easily perceivable to when an adequate address was not in place.

I don't know anybody who has been close to a Vinyl Source that does not have a very decent understanding of the importance of the above. The question is, has it been experienced in place in ones own system, or is it a Lip Service showing there is some form of a understanding. 

I'm half regretting waking up this thread, especially as some find it hard to be civil.

The fact is that I have not yet seen someone who has owned an underhung arm say anything bad about them. Those who do own one, seem to be unanimous in their praise. Perhaps that is what we should expect, human nature being what it is.

As a hypothesis, it is not inconceivable that anti-skate (which is, at best, only set correctly for one groove on an entire LP) is a greater cause of distortion than tracking error. It should be easy to tell with an experiment. My hesitation comes down to the observation that the arm I would use has its bearings aligned with an offset headshell and cartridge. It will not stop the arm moving as it needs to, but it might increase friction. All tonearms permit horizontal movement as they track, and vertical motion is allowed to cope with warps in the record. My experiment would mean that a warp cause movement in both sets of bearings, thus increasing friction and and momentarily changing the VTF applied to the record. Not desirable as a permanent way of using the arm, but would the putative improvement from the underhang outweigh this factor? If I don't know that, I can't draw any useful conclusion from a negative result, and I don't want to muddy the waters with a poorly designed experiment.

Dogberry, a warp, or any other change in stylus velocity which is actually happening throughout the course of replay, has no effect on the friction force. The equation for that force is simply the coefficient of friction for the two materials that are in contact multiplied by the normal force that is causing the contact. “Normal” here means the perpendicular component of that force.

While I completely agree that one who purchases an underhung tonearm will have a certain “expectation bias” toward forming a positive opinion, it seems a little far fetched to conclude that all the positive reviews, even from reviewers who haven’t bought the tonearm, could be fairly attributable to expectation bias.