Discuss The Viv Lab Rigid Arm

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.

Sorry for not completing my thought above. The skating force arises due to friction between stylus and groove. Therefore the need for AS does not vary with stylus velocity. It does vary in both magnitude and direction with respect to the angle by which the cantilever is out of line with the pivot.

Lew, I meant that with the bearings being aligned as they are, any up and down motion will involve not just moving the bearing that allows vertical movement, it will also mean moving the horizontal bearing. So moving both ball races instead of one should double the friction to overcome, requiring more force to do so. By the third law that will increase VTF. I'm not involving anti-skate or stylus friction here.