Floating your Speedy Boat ... Hi Speedy,
I could have been a bit more clear in my description of my year long experience with the 2.2. My take on Bob and his tonearms is that:
(1) Bob Graham is a very gifted engineer
(2) He has an aesthetic vision and knows how to reach his goal
(3) His aesthetic sense does not quite match my sensibilities
(4) He is a great guy
Perhaps I should be selling his arms too, because I in no way want to dictate my taste upon others.
To give you a bit of background, my musical tastes go all over the map - from small chamber music, 20th Century String Quartets, Bluegrass / Newgrass (and their spin-offs), Caribbean Jazz, 60's West Coast Rock (The Airplane and the Dead), and more ...
My system is oriented around single ended triodes and horns, although I'm not by any means married to this architecture ... I'm married to music, and find that the sound of good products tends to converge around a central point - irrespective of their design architecture. I think for example that my turntables share many of the virtues of the great rim drive 'tables of the past.
I emphasize replacing every capacitor in the signal path of my electronics with iron (transformers), as I've found the sound to be more pure, direct, and immediate. I do not however favor a false or etched sound, as I'm certain no one in this discussion does. The sound of an interstage transformer (a good one) to my ears, and everyone in my listening group strips away layers of murk in comparison to even Audionote sliver capacitors, while at the same time affording excellent isolation between amplification stages. Enough of the geek stuff ...
Last year, I brought my turntable fitted with a Graham 2.2 and Denon DL 103R over to a friend's house. I tend to not travel with expensive cartridges. I think a good turntable with a good arm, does not need a top flight cartridge to strut its stuff - as long as the cartridge matches the arm, of course. In the same way, I consider a vacuum tube circuit that depends on rare, expensive tubes to sound good be an unacceptable design. The circuit should sound good with run of the mill JJ Teslas, Sovteks, etc. Of course it will sound better with rare, fine tubes, but it should not depend on them.
This fellow had sold his Graham 2.2 because it sounded too lean 'n mean for his tastes in the context of his system balance. As an aside, he (Grant Gassman on my owners' page) owns a Dynavector XV-1 - an incredible cartridge which could tempt me away from a ZYX. The Graham 2.2 on my rig in his system actually had more "muscle" than Grant's rig and he commented that he would never have sold his 2.2 had it sounded like this.
My 'table has something to do with this, but that's a whole 'nuther story. The point of the above diatribe, that I've lived with a 2.2 and have a good idea about how to set it up, and impressed a former owner of the arm - a highly discriminating individual.
The 2.2 is an expression of a fine man who's vision is not quite in sync. with my musical aesthetic. It's an arm which I can envision many people being extremely happy with. I'd love to hear the Phantom, and from comments I've heard, it is a continuing improvement of the breed. One hates to predispose oneself to supposition and prognostication, but my guess is that I'll walk away from the experience with continued respect for Bob's designs while still not considering it to be quite my cup of tea. But then again ... I could be wrong.
Yes ... the Robin is underpriced for the sonic goods it delivers - Art Dudley's opinion notwithstanding.
Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier
