Straight tonearms without offset angle

Dear @viridian :  What the reviewer posted in your last link on the VIV about the kind of bearing is way important. I just today read the link information.

Way before that I posted in the VIV Labs thread something that almost no owner made a comments in my post and what I posted was the excellent damping bearing  oil " mechanism " and the arm tube O rings.

All those for me ( I posted a thread about just tonearm damping due to its critical importance. ) could represent over the 70% maybe more of the sound that owners experienced and still experience more than the underhung issue. Damping can easily gives that better dynamic, clarity, definition, better bass performance, etc. etc. even in overhang tonearms designs and always I posted for at least the last 20 years the tonearm critical damping.

I'm not dimishing the underhung idea but my first hand experiences about AS ( even what mijo and other think. ) and due that through the Wally tractor the AS range is ( I can't remember exactly. ) between 9% to 12 " that seems to me not really substantial I can confirm that if we use a good tonearm design  ( good damped too. ) if we use it with out apply any AS the " response " from that fact is not only cleary, dynamic and the like but the MUSIC flows as in a live event. I don't use AS and over all the grooved LP surface the imaging is DEAD centered always.

That's really why I don't but the VIV. Again that kind of those to ways of damping are really the VIV: oil floating bearing and O rings.

That's my take and I appreciated that you linked to know that not only me took seriously the tonearm damping in the VIV but that reviewer.  Seems to me that almost all owners give everything to the underhung design, well not me even that I'm not an owner.

Yes as JC said: the S and intrinsecal " play " with the AS is the problem down there, so why not NO AS in overhang tonearm. This is me, only thinking " loud ".

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,

R.

Agree on the bearing.

@lewm then let's say it is daring to go off the beaten path. It is the Reed 5T Lou. I would love to try both arms also, but they will not fit on my turntable and i have not current plans to  buy another. @larryi staying digital is the smart thing. What does that say about the rest of us. J Carr tried to convince me that the cantilever of my Atlas SL was deviating because I did not know how to set my antiskating correctly. When I told him I set it to 11% by WallySkater he said I should have set it to 14%. The cantilever has stabilized a few degrees towards the right channel, away from the spindle. It is still one of the finest sounding cartridges I have ever heard, but I shall not buy another. I paid $450 for what should have been a warranty repair and will move on. 

I am the happy owner of the 7" Rigid Float CB (carbon fiber) arm. I met Akimoto-san in March near his home in Kamakura. He is a wonderful human being; communication worked well and he explained to me the important parts of his design, most importantly - as had already been pointed out  earlier - the complete decoupling from vibrations by means of the floating suspension: the arm floats in a viscous oil and is kept in place by a strong internal magnet pulling it down towards the rigid/stationary part of the housing w/o touching it. Imagine a ball in a bowl floating on a film of liquid: gravity will always pull it towards the center; now replace gravity with magnetic attraction, and you get the gist of the mechanism. It's comparable to a uni-pivot arm without the mechanical drawbacks (I myself have used the Woody arm for a long time: I loved its vivid sound, but hated the hour-long set-up routine). The second, and in my opinion unique feature is the complete freedom of placement: the arm comes as a self-contained (and quite heavy) unit that can be placed at any point around the platter, even away from the plinth, as long as the stylus can be positioned into a tiny hole in the placement template (a thin rectangular piece of plastic foil) above the platter. The entire set up, including VTF after cartridge mounting on the supplied head shell, takes no longer than 10 to 15 minutes. Akimoto-san holds a degree of mechanical engineering from the University of Tokyo, Japan's top university, and he is also a passionate audiophile. Combine the two, and you get this iconoclastic masterpiece, which sounds like it wasn't there at all. Needless to say, I bought the arm while we were still enjoying sashimi at a tiny place near the railway station - and never looked back. It's a true game-changer!