Why is the price of new tonearms so high

"I see the resell prices of used products showing the real value of a product. A lot of high end products take substantial equity hits on the used markets"

nO DOUBT.

Has anyone actually heard either of the Continuum arms? Your thoughts would be appreciated.

Dear Daniel,

I believe these are among the few key features of any great pivot tonearm design. All truely great pivot tonearms do have these 4 in common (except the Graham Phantom - which I would include in my list).

The DaVinci does not have azimuth adjustment. Do you not consider this arm "truly great"?

I disagree that the prices of 'new' tonearms is high.
Apart from the incredible investment in research and computer and materials modeling by a company like Continuum for their Cobra and Copperhead arms which sell in very small volumes, I believe it is the cost of new cartridges primarily, and new turntables secondly that inflate the relative pricing of new tonearms?

When it is fairly common for a LOMC cartridge to cost from $4,000-$6,000 and the new 'benchmark' cartridges $10,000-$15,000, how silly would it seem for the tonearm (which I believe to be more critical than the cartridge) to cost a mere $3,000?
When you include the fact that the cartridges will be worthless in 2 years whilst the tonearm will hopefully last 20-30 years, the equation looks fairly ridiculous?
And who in his right mind, would mount a $3,000 tonearm on his $60,000-$160,000 turntable?

Halcro,
do you think that the efforts small companies bring to the scene with advanced computer analysis of TTs outweighs the big money that big corporations like Technics could put into the development long ago although with less elaborate computer analysis. My guess is that the electronics play a lesser role in TTs compared to CDs and that the physics that still govern the biggest part of the design has been available for quite a while?