Just yesterday I had an opportunity to hear a Schroder Reference and the Graham Phantom on the same turntable (Teres 360). They were fitted with different cartridges (Lyra Olympus on the Schroder and a Koetsu Tiger eye platinum with a diamond cantilever in the Phantom). There was not enough time to switch cartridges so we were not able to do a true apples to apples comparison. However, I did form some opinions that others may find useful. Remember I said OPINIONS so please, no flames.
From what I heard the Phantom appears to be big improvement over the 2.2. I thought that the Schroder/Olympus
combination was clearly better overall. However, the gap was smaller than I would have expected. Reading between the lines a bit I suspect that the Schroder is still quite a bit ahead of the Phantom.
The Phantom has the same ease of setup as the 2.2 and great build quality. There was one small glitch with the setup. The Phantom has less lower VTA range than the 2.2. For this
particular setup there was only about 1/16" downward range left when it was dialed in. Odd that Bob would make a change in this parameter.
I would also like to confirm Cello's comments. I owned a Graham 2.2 for about 1-1/2 years and at the time it was my favorite, easily displacing an older Triplanar. However, it was completely out classed by the Schroder Reference. I spent considerable time with both arms so this was not just a quick comparison. This conclusion was confirmed twice during the well conducted comparisons that Cello has already discussed.
Albert: The setup for these evaluations were carefully done . No doubt all of the parameters were not dialed in to perfection, but they were close. Similar effort went into each tonearm setup so in my mind the playing field was even. If am arm needs hours of fine tuning to sound right then that should be considered to be a liability. That liability rightly should be part of the evaluation equation. Not that I think that came into play here, more of a philosophical point. Besides that magnitude of the differences we heard between each of the tonearms was much more than what could be explained by setup differences.
Gmorris: Love fest you say... Funny how this mantra often comes up when a group of people enthusiastically endorse a product. It would pay to ask why the "love fest" exists rather than dissing it. Maybe it is simply because the product is a good as it is claimed to be. I both recommend and sell Schroder tonearms. From a business perspective this is a poor practice. Many sales have been and are stalled waiting for a tonearm from heir Schroder. So what possible motivation could I have for recommending Schroder tonearms other than I think that they are the best choice for my customers. I have an arrangements to OEM Graham, Basis, Orign Live, Morch and Triplanar tonearms. All of these tonearms have better availability. I recommend Schroder tonearms because I believe in them. When I find a better tonearm, I will recommend it. No conspiracy here.
