Why is the price of new tonearms so high

Hi T_bone,
gee, my man. Go got that so right, like you'd been doing this for a living! Sir, yes Sir!

Now this 'Hartmann' (Brakemeier?) dude also addressing them "human f#@&ing beings" from high-up his Olympus mountain - elevated demigod of... FR? (F#@&ing Recrutes)

I think you got the drift.
So long it doesn't get boring around here.
A.

Huh, that hurts

Hi Axel, ..... entertaining........ everything off topic, but still entertaining.

In its day the FR arms were OK, but they have long been surpassed in terms of State of the Art. These days the better arms will be seen to have their bearings in the same plane as the LP, which helps the arm maintain steady tracking forces when playing through warps and playing bass. The best arms I have seen also have treated arm tubes to eliminate resonance in the arm tube. One of the better examples of this approach is the Triplanar.

So far air bearings in arms and tables have proven to be a failed concept- any play that exists between the platter surface and the cartridge cantilever will be a coloration (often a lack of bass, but can manifest in many other ways as well). This is why the more air pressure you put into an air bearing, the better the system sounds. The problem is you can never have enough air pressure and why an air bearing might be 'good' but never state of the art.

Dear Atmasphere,
well - steady tracking force while through warps....... if you look real close it is an interaction between the suspension of the cantilever and the vertical moving mass vector of the given tonearm.......
That dynamically balanced mode is simply superior in exactly this quest compared to the static mode is obvious - but if you have a different position - fine with me.
You prefer the Triplanar over the FR-66s - fine with me.

As for your explorations regarding air bearings.............. fine with me too.

I have different positions for good reason.

But my wife just reminds me that I shouldn't waste my time with problems which aren't mine...............

As Douglas Adams put it so nicely: ........ a POOP-field........Problems Of Other People.....