Discuss The Viv Lab Rigid Arm


I am trying to do my due diligence about this arm. I am just having a hard time getting my head around this idea of zero overhang and no offset. Does this arm really work the way it is reported to do?

neonknight

Yes, I think it makes sense to assure that the single null point falls somewhere on the playable surface of the LP, and for many reasons known to both of us, it seems a good idea to place it nearer to the innermost grooves than the outermost grooves. That minimizes both TAE and skating force. And my listening suggests it sounds best, which is the main goal.

Looks like we are following in the footsteps of others. This is an interesting thread:

https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/dont-listen-to-records-on-fm.359025/

There are links to two different tonearm geometries playing a solo piano in post #2. Please watch those videos before reading the whole thread, and especially before looking at the other links or further down to post #14 where the geometries are shown. The difference is huge, even to my ear.

Dogberry, Thank you so much for finding and posting the thread from DIYAudio. It's a very valuable contribution to this thread.  I also finally see why the RS Labs RS-A1 might actually benefit from its weirdly raised pivot (which aligns the arm wand with cantilever VTA and thereby reduces vertical FM modulation).  Too bad that this is done at the expense of some other factors.  Nevertheless, the main issue is horizontal scrubbing and how it is greatly increased by headshell offset angle. I hope that some others who are dead set against underhung tonearms with zero headshell offset will read the DIYAudio thread and above all, watch and listen to the Youtube videos provided therein.

I’ve been using a zero offset headshell for 38 years - the arm is a linear tracker.

Superior tracking, most accurate soundstage and lowest distortion of any tonearm I have heard or set up ( including several highly vaunted pivoted arms in my toolbox ) by a country mile.

Looking at the scrubbing motion caused by both horizontal and vertical deviations of the cantilever, it makes me realise that this may have been the "cantilever haze" that Decca declared their cartridges would not suffer from.