Why is the price of new tonearms so high

Good audio products are produced on a small scale. Small scale production is unfortunately quite a few times more expensive than mass produced items.

I there were a factory in China churning out Triplanar arms, 1000x an hour then that arm would have cost next to nothing. In the real world those arms are hand-built, one at a time and that is one of the reasons for their elevated price.

I briefly worked at a high-end amplifier manufacturer and my eyes popped open to see that it is a labour of love and nothing comes cheap.

Funny thread that is.
Just now we had: "Why are oldskool tonearm so expensive"
(thread got 'lost' during database cleanup - yes?)
And now this?
Next guy that talks about FR arms again, will get dumped.

Look there are very decent arms for less than what an 'old one' can cost you, else there was no need for a ~ 300 post long thread on that other subject, or?

If you need an arm that needs a compressor, and 'diamonds on the soles of it's shoes.." spend 12k or more.

As the other post mentioned, if you don't want e.g. a 'Breguet' watch
see: http://www.breguet.com/ for 100k plus, a 'Swatch' will also tell the time :-)

Horses for courses, no?

Greetings,
Axel

Axelwahl, I noticed that thread got "lost". Doesn't surprise me. It is a real pity that a lot of decent information/contribution/experience had to get disappeared because a couple of guys couldn't keep their elbows down in a crowd. It's not the first time that the same crew has been responsible for a decent thread with decent information getting disappeared.

FWIW, it is a shame that the moderators could not do something like the Audioasylum moderators do and just move the offending thread line to a different thread in a "dead end" category (make those threads permissioned so that they only show up on the "My Threads" list of those who posted the offending remarks).

Axel, the naming must be pure coincident:-)

Dear T_bone, I assume that the "Oldskool"-thread was shut down because of the verbal insults between Raul and Bob. A pity indeed. I doubt that we will ever see again that much information about tonearm-geometry and set-up piled together in one thread here on Audiogon.
Well, as for the original matter of this thread: - marketing and the fast dollar. There are no other reasons for the current prices asked for top-flight tonearms. Material and construction as well as manufacturing costs can't justify the asking prices.
Cheers,
D.