Zaikesman, the damping I was refering to is fluid damping and besides sound its effect on the cartridge is this; when the arm is put into motion, lets say to the left, the weight of the arm resist the motion, and then goes into motion to the left, pulled by the cantilever. when the cantilever then goes back to the right, the arm is still going left, and so the inertia arm of the puts additional stress on the cantilever.
How much stress is put on the cantilever is affected by how heavy the arm is. (actually not the weight, but the inertia, which is affected by weight).The higher the complience, the more the cantilever flexes to a given amount of weight, and if the cantilever can flex enough, and the arm is heavy enough, the arm can be put in motion.
The real idea is to keep the cantilever centered, not having to much resistance to movement so the arm follows the cantilever, but enough resistance to keep it from overshooting.To achieve this, a fluid of a certain viscosity is used, the viscosity permits slow movement with little resistance while faster movement is resisted. So you can see that the tuning of the viscosity, and amount, could achieve this.
Here's where it gets complicated-damping with fluid can have similar effects to adding weight, as the fluid restricts movement. Fluid can have positive effects on sound. How much is attributed to keeping the coils centered or the restriction of movement, or the adding of the solidity and resistance to vibrations is one question in my head. the other is that as weight is added, and fluid is not, this makes the arm more prone to going in motion.
Fluid can have negative effects as well. Besides the cantilever to be less centered by not having it tuned properly, or causing more stress than intended, to much damping kills the sound quality. In my experience, Adding damping cleans up the sound and widens the stages, and tightens aand focuses the bass. After a certian point, then the sound starts to get dulled in the high end, then becomes veiled and then more diffused past the point it was before it was added. There have been some instances where adding any at all caused this.
So there is the object of my curiousity, one or two of them, among others.
The damping you are refering to, Zaikesman, is damping the armtube for ringing, and it is always a good idea. I have always had good results, no matter how good or bad the arm, no matter how good the match of arm and cartidge. One of my favorites-a drinking straw, of slightly smaller diameter than the inside of the armtube, and stuff the space between the straw and the inside of the armtube. This provides a pretty good surface/dialectric for the wire as well. (seems better then having it smushed against the armtube). I want to try cat hair, but my doner cat moved on. My theory is that cats seem to absorbe sound,and they are always sneeking up on stuff. In the wild, they have to be sound absorbant, so there may be something evolutionary to that.
Twl, fifty bucks, that would be a bargain. Seems like a hard way to make money, as I don't see much profit there. I think a lot of people would be into it though.