Is it worth this tonearm?

I have the Triplanar arm and ZYX Universe
I am picking up my Galibier table this week

Mehran is so wonderful to deal with
hope he's thriving in his new Chicago setting

I did the same research on the arms (search Moerch here on the gon) and felt the Moerch was good for the money but for 50% more I had an arm I could keep for life!

I got a lot of help from Doug Deacon and others

what phono pre are you using?

good luck in your quest

I have had both Moerch (Blue dot) and Triplanar in my systems and the most noticeable difference is in the lower registers where I found the Triplanar more rock solid and the Moerch is softer. As always arm matching with cartridges (and phono cable) is very important and for me the Zyx sounds right in the Triplanar and less involving in the Moerch. Hope that helps.

Radi- that sounds great. That was some of the info I was looking for. Partucularly with rock, I don't want "softer.' Thanks for chiming in especially since you have expereince with both!!

Audiotomb, yes i have read a couple of threads of yours and in fact your threads were the ones that lead me to start this questioning. Doug as well has been extremely helpful. I like your point and it is well noted, an arm i can keep for life. Now thats what I am after. That sounds like it should be worth 50% more! I'll be using a Nick Doshi pre with phono.

Cheers all

Peter,

You've already gotten many insightful responses. I do know one UNIverse owner who upgraded from DP-6 to TriPlanar. He was frankly astonished by the improvement wrought by the TriPlanar. My experience with the Atmos suggests it is worth having a very good arm, so if the budget allows...

Based on your musical priorities and your desire to set/forget when feasible, you chose well getting the Atmos rather than the UNIverse. While both cartridges respond to very fine tuning, the Atmos is more forgiving of small inaccuracies. That's a nice way of saying it's less resolving than a UNIverse, but for many listeners and many records that is probably just fine. We get extraordinary musical results from the top model, even more since some recent changes I'll be posting about, but that extraordinary resolution demands extraordinary attention to every variable. You can't get one without the other.

Best,
Doug

Peter, I recently switched from a Moerch DP-6 (with 12" Red wand) to a Triplanar, each used on a Galibier Gavia. In my opinion, they are both excellent arms and, with the right cartridge, are each capable of top flight performance. It is hard to provide helpful capsule descriptions of the two arms because the sound of the Moerch (like many other arms) will be affected so much by the choice of phono cable. The Triplanar has a dedicated cable so it isn't subject to that variable. With that major caveat, I found the Triplanar to have slightly greater inner detail and a more solid low frequency foundation. Of course, the Triplanar also has more convenient adjustments for VTA and cartridge alignment.

For someone who prefers to listen to music rather than obsess over tonearm adjustments, the Moerch can be quite satisfying. If you are the type who wants to adjust VTA for each recording, the Triplanar is clearly the way to go.

Dave