Why is the price of new tonearms so high

Dear Mapam, you are absolutely right. This is the one point that I simply don't understand.
Why do so many audiophiles,- who talk in length about the sometimes subtle differences in cartridges or super expensive cables or preamplifiers - say that its o.k. if the alignment seems fine but its not necessary to adjust for the fraction of a mm.
The polished area of a modern day stylus is 1 x 6 µm ....... that is 1/1000 mm x 6/1000 mm.
You do not get the right picture if you do not work precisely.
A mm off and you are no longer in the street, in fact you are no longer in the same part of the city........
The point is not that the dynamically balanced tonearm has small advantages with warped records - the advantages are fairly large.
Furthermore, each and every records surface and groove-walls aren't perfect flat.
During the run of a record groove the tonearm/cartridge combination does in fact perform a constant hill and valley parcours - hundreds of small up and downs.
Each up and down does alter the tracking force - just a bit of course, but then we are talking subtle changes ONLY in all of analog high-end.
That is why a dynamically balanced tonearm sounds "quiter" (for some ears with a less dynamic set-up it may sound "less live-like") and more relaxed than a static balanced tonearm whose cartridge does track with constant changes in its VTF.
This is not just my opinion, but everybody will agree if he makes a small drawing of the - thank you Perrew! - force vectors involved.
We are fooling ourselves if we do not work absolutely precise and if we do not apply those technical features which are easily available.
Precision is not easy and may consumpt some time and effort.
But it is the heart of the game and the door to true high-end sound.
The one and only door - too often missed by too many set-ups.

"God lives in the detail....... "(M.v.d. Rohe, an architect)

Settle for less and you waste a large portion of your investment.
Its the same as running your high performance car with 20 year old tires well past any profile......
Cheers,
D.

Perrew, one could use the tape outs of our preamp, but one function of the linestage that most people don't realize is that it must control the interconnect cable as well. In a stand-alone phono section this does become a source of coloration. That is why our preamps are full-function.

You can convert from balanced to SE at the input of the amplifier with an adapter or cable made for the purpose. It is nice not to be limited by cable length or quality (cost)- something not possible with single-ended cables.

So it sounds like the dynamic balanced tone arms have always positive VTF due to 'preload' provided when record is spinning by the spring. As Raul indicated, dynamically balanced may not be exactly the right term (not 100% balanced at every slice of time but still close enough to maintain contact, always), but the point is there is always positive VTF v/s -negative at times( warped records, highly dynamic music contents. etc). Thanks, no wonder I never come across this term as all my three tone arms are 'statically balanced' ( Clearaudio master TQ1. , SPJ by La Luce and Transrotor RB250)

I would guess terminolgy will still apply for tangential ton arms. Any tangential arms come with spring loaded VTF? Another question, while I am at it is: Why sound and freq balance changes higher the VTF gets? How do you know what is right VTF other than by ear? What is max VTF? What if higher than allowable max sounds right?

This is an interesting discussion. My experience with dynamic vs. static is with the Grado arm. Joe Grado said that the best result was with 1/2 each or 1/3 2/3 (and I forget if that meant spring was more or less). My system back in that time was a VPI HW 2, Grado XTZ, AR SP-11, Rowland 5, Infinity RS2-b, not IRS status but yet still revealing. I could not hear the difference between the static and dynamic. I was not playing warps though. I believe in market forces and that if spring VTF was thus superior then all arms would have it. I also believe that the tone arm bearing type is more important than the VTF system. You can see market forces here as well... I think more than most top arms are uni-pivots, though this is not from actual sales figures by arm type, just a guess by all the words we all write and the types I see available in English speaking sites and magazines.

Peter

I had assumed, perhaps incorectly, that this discussion of dynamic vs. static balance was in relation to gimbal pivot arms like my SME V. But Breuninger has me now thinking about the different effect each of these balance types have on gimbal vs. unipivot designs. I am also now curious if more arms currently in use are gimbal- or uni- pivot designs.

As far as Raul describing which design priciples he is persuing with his new arm, I doubt he would want to discuss specifics before the design is complete, but if he is, that sure would be an interesting contribution to this thread.

We have gotten way off the original question of this thread which was pretty much covered in the first few responses. For my part, I apologize. Perhaps there should be a separate arm-design thread.