Why is the price of new tonearms so high

Dear Perrew,if the Reed can compete with the dynamically
balanced tonearms (pace Dertonarm) I don't know.
In any case I can't compete with Dertonarm. He is the
expert. Besides a very eloquent and knowledgable person.
I am just one amateur enjoying my analog gear.
BTW because of the division of labor we must count on 'some
authoritys'. The problem is that 'some authoritys' disagree
about,say, the FR-66,64 qualitys.Dynamic or otherwise.
Regards

Peter, right now I am running a - modified beyond recognition... - TT consisting of a RY5500 motor, RX-3000 base with double 38 lbs platter isolated spindle from bearing and floating on silicon grease bed, counter motor and suspended on 1 Hz air-cushion.
My own final assault on the topic TT is under construction and I will pulish a few pictures in early winter when finished.
Cheers,
D.

Can you tell me a little bit more about the air-cushion?
So I guess your final assault will be something similar along the lines of heavy platter belt drive with very elaborate damping system?

Hello Meister D.
"Musing and watching"...

Some bionic rig!
Über motor, über platter, über bearing, über alles...
Add some, über drive belt/string, über cables, über phono-stage,….

Removed yourself 10/10 from the rest of the analogue world out here it seems. "N'oublie pas que tu vas mourir" :-)

This of course might just explain also some of these divergent findings on arm resonances.
High mass platters and floating bearings have their way with resonances, we know.

In fact, it puts your 'comparative' findings and arguments way out yonder.
Not easy to make much sense of it then, with the rest of most all 'commercial' audio and some bit of 'boutique-audio' components.

"Musing and watching" Hm...

The "final assault" is a combination of magnetic isolation and air cushion - fine tuned and stabilized at 0.5 Hz horizontal and vertical.
The platter isn't heavy - its much more than that.
The bearing is a horizontal force free string drive indeed.
This TT does adress about 6 individual issues no other TT has so far.
And all these are solved.
But its about 500 lbs net weight - not suitable for any rack.......
As you already see from these few figures - not a commercial product at all.

For a very good - no money - air cushion, you may go to the next special bike store and get fluid-filled small size (3 - 5") tires. These do give excellent isolation with very low tuning frequency and work better with all but the most heavy TT's than most of the lower priced professional isolation platforms (the higher priced ones start at US$4000....).