Mint Tractor

Hi Doug,

We can most certainly thank Palasr for getting us up off our collective butts to try going arc-style. My relatively imprecise card-stock protractors (compared with Yip's MintLP's) immediately caught my attention, and while not perfect, they result in a far superior setup to anything I've achieved with ANY two point protractor.

It's to this point that I provide every new owner of a Schroeder, Triplanar, and Artisan tonearm one of these card-stock protractors - not as a final solution, but rather to provide sufficient evidence and motivation to point them to MintLP.

The biggest effect this order of magnitude level of alignment improvement has is that it takes you out of audiophile mode and into music appreciation mode.

Along these lines, I'm going to make a prediction about what you'll notice in the coming days - that you'll get less finicky about making VTA changes for individual records. Now, this has always been a dragon you've sought to slay, but my prediction is that it will become quite a bit smaller and will breath quite a bit less fire than before.

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier

Yep, Doug and all, I am certainly glad to be on the same page as you heavy hitters as far as the MintLP is concerned. My modestly-tricked-out Sig. Scout sounds better than I ever dreamed it would, the arc device from Yip making the biggest difference of all. Even budget set ups can sound great with alignment parameters maximized. Thanks to Yip, Mark, (Stiltskin) and all, and Audiogon for making it happen. Got to go and spin some vinyl!

Thanks,
Dan

Dan that's great.
I know you went through a period of doubt with your vinyl play back and came close to giving up on it entirely.

However you kept working away at it, with a bit of encouragement ,it slowly improved.

Then it finally paid off using the Mint.

Palasr, Dan-ed and Tim are the one's who brought the MintLp to our attention and I gratefully thank them...

Stringreen,
What is the effective length of your MintTractor Arc? I also have a JMW10.5i arm.

thanks

I spent some time with Doug(deacon) and Paul yesterday and I can report that the speaker integration and what I would call more "holistic" sound are there in spades. Now they also have new speakers (Diamond version B&Ws, 805d I think; replacing non-diamond 805s) so some of what I heard is undoubtedly a result of that change. But the somewhat "analytical" nature of their system has now tipped toward "relaxed" or musical. More precise imaging, wider soundstage, excellent pitch definition in the bass. BTW, we also found that their Tri-P/Univ arm/cart tracked the problem child new Norah Jones live LP just fine. I'm a big fan of hers, so I'm sorry to report that the recording, esp. the bass, is, well there's no other way to put it, TERRIBLE. Paul thinks it was the result of miking they used; I have not idea, but the bass drum esp. was powerful and ill-defined, but with almost a reverb quality to it. Just a gigantic "thump". NO skin, no air, just WHAM!