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why is a 13" tonearm design really superior?

we just mounted the SAEC WE-8000 on my Nakamichi and I can´t really believe what kind of fantastic sound this tonearm is able to reproduce. Is it because this is a very special 13" design or because of the extraordinary headshell design? I think it is the only tonearm with such a long straight alu-pipe. Am i right? Also the lift design is unique, this lift stops at every level you like to use.
Why are todays tonearm developers not anymore going for a 13" or 14" design?
thuchan
thuchan OP
1,009 posts
 
I promised to report about the 24" tonearm I have seen on a pic - it is a design of German tonearm designer Fuchs. A friend of mine told me that it sounded very good. 24" inches - not too short...
axelwahl
788 posts
 
We next aught to work on a 24'long, what say you?
Like a low resonace pool-cleaner tube?
Will like major minimise the tangent error, no?
Got to have some fantasie else things are not moving foreward here, I say.
thuchan OP
1,009 posts
 
at the High-End in Munich the Italian designer Horo presented a turntable in the figure of a long Steinway piano. He mounted a tonearm in the form of a violin bow, properly a 30" design... I never listened to it.
flyfish2002's avatar
flyfish2002
94 posts
 
During my e-mail exchanges with Bob Graham when I recently upgraded my 1.5t to a Phantom Mk ii, he indicated that he is not in agreement on "longer tone arm length means superior anything" when viewing the tone arm a comprehensive whole.

He felt his standard Phantom Mk ii (which I believe is 9.5") is a world class tone arm - period. Bob indicated that he did develop the 10" Phantom Mk ii arm wand for the sole purpose of accomodating those TT owners who use a ring clamp of some sort, like the VPI super platter with ring clamp. I have a TNT IV with super platter and ring clamp. Without the 10" Phantom Mk ii, the ring clamp would grind against the Phantom - not good.

I do not understand the science behind these discussions, but I wanted to share the opinion of one of the "masters" in this area.

I like Graham arms, so for me, I will accept Bob's design decisions. For others, maybe not so much. That's the beauty of our hobby.

Brent
dfelkai
89 posts
 
HAHAHAHAHAHA, LOL. Yeah there are trade-offs when the arm length becomes to large. The change in effective weight placed on the stylus proportional to changes in up and down vertical movement increase with arm mass. So yeah don't plan on using a flag pole as a tone arm just yet. Nonetheless, a slightly longer tonearm certainly does decrease tangency error for the reasons given above, it is simple geometry. The optimization problem is slightly more complicated as Baerwald was helped by 12 guys from nasa, as I understand it. Well, I have not found it to be too difficult, nothing a little calculus of variations and free parameter sensitivity analysis of some parametrically defined functions can't solve. IE> a slight bit beyond highschool calculus if you want to do it from scratch, and 9th grade math if you would like to use Baerwald's, Loengren's, or Stevenson's optimal null points tweaked for your turntable.
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