Discuss The Viv Lab Rigid Arm

Dear @lewm : Seems to me that you " die for " the skating force and nothing wrong with that.

Now, LT tonearms appeared for one main critical reason ( where skate develoved was not in that " equation ". ) that was and is that the mounted cartridge on it rides the LP grooves surface in "exactly " the same way that that LP recording was under the cutting head machine this is LT.

Audiophiles, me including, bougth the LT ( still today do. ) designs for that main critical reason and no one said or say: " I’m buy because no skating ", no one cares about because this is only an additional side LT tonearm benefit.

In the other side almost all the off-set angle pivot tonearms come with some kind of anti-skating mechanism that in some way or the other has the AS under " control " and no not " perfect " but those kind of designers try to put at minimum.

So, all overhang tonearm designs with Löfgreen alignments set-up are ( no matter what ) the second best " road " behind the LT and not the underhung that you like it or not is far away from there . The overhang tonearm designs are not with ZERO ( 0 ) AS, designers take care about in the best each one of them can and again not " perfect "..

R.

This morning being a leisurely Sunday morning, I re-read the entirety of this thread from beginning to end, although I admit I skipped through some of those from naysayers that I already knew by heart. What struck me is that each of the major protagonists (or should I call us "antagonists"), myself included, wrote the same thing, over and over again, sometimes using different words but not much different logic. Around page 5, I bought the Viv 9HA (9-inch, aluminum tube) and started reporting on that. That was about a year ago this month. I remain very pleased with this tonearm. If anything, I have understated the degree to which I enjoy it so as to avoid the predictable backlash. Suffice to say, I agree with the other guys who are also owners and who posted one or two very positive comments and then left this thread, wisely.

Raul, why is it that my ideas about why the Viv sounds so good are just "blah, blah, blah", whereas your constant parroting of your belief system over and over again is not also "blah"? (I’m giving you only one "blah", because it’s so boring.) Is it just because the overhung tonearm is received wisdom? AS does NOT "control" the skating force, by any means, by the way. One could make an argument that AS makes things worse by putting a torque on the cantilever, which is already under horizontal duress due to skating. AS is like a stopped clock; it is correct (i.e., it equals the skating force in magnitude) at two short moments during the 20 minutes duration of an LP side. And even then it is combining with the skating force to put a twist on the cantilever, because it is applied near the pivot.

Again, not perfect but second best option behind the LT, that's all.

What you like is what you like and it's not my " business " and I can't disagree with what you like. End of dialogue because you never posted any fact/measurements for what you support, fine. Enough.

R.

Forgot: what you like is not the true issue ( at least with me. Yous did not get my point. ) but what is wrong or good.

R.

Ok I have a theory...

On a conventional arm with offset headshell..if you draw an imaginary line extending the cantilever, past its suspension point, all the way backwards to the plane of the arms pivot point. Viewed from the front of the cartridge, the new ultra-long cantilever will terminate at a point way above and to the right of the arms pivot point.

Now the theory...Attached here is a link that very graphically shows the magnitude of stylus drag. ( I  hope the link works)  watch to at least 4 mins.

Скатывающая сила как измерить (youtube.com)  

Now pull on the stylus ... due to the compliance of the cartridge suspension  AND the headshell offset, the end of our extended cantilever will move downwards and to the left. If there was enough travel in the cartridges suspension and if we pulled on the stylus hard enough, the extended cantilever would ultimately touch the arms pivot point. 

So back to an actual cartridge... the action of stylus drag causes the cantilever to squat down a little. This has been talked about in other forums, and I believe mentioned by Michael Fremer,  but the action of stylus drag with an offset headshell also causes the cantilever to move to the right when viewed from the front of the cartridge. By how much? I don't know... would it be enough to cancel a carefully set up Lofgren alignment? Possibly. Would it cause an increase tracking error distortion? Maybe. 

Would it mean that a underhung arm, when playing a record actually has less tracking error distortion than an offset overhung arm? IOW opposite to what the theoretical static calculations would suggest. ..Maybe. 

If this 'yawing' action is a thing, it would be constantly changing with the level of modulation. I could speculate that it would result in a kind of "dirtiness" to the sound and a sense of the stylus scratching its way thru the groove. 

Cheers.