TW-Acustic Arm

Hiho, the Thales Simplicity looks surely exciting, but he is not new at all.
Look in the Garrard archives and you'll know why I didn't labeled the Sinplicity "new". Garrard had a similar looking tonearm - and quite similar too in technical design - at hand when John Lennon was still alive.
A common phenomenon - if a design isn't around for quite a while, it's return is often an all new invention for many.
We have had that in speakers and poweramplifiers in the last 2 decades with the resurrection of field-coil, horn speakers and SE-OPT amplifiers - all techniques from the late 1920ies which weren't used in custom applications aside from Cinema or special Pro-Audio since the 1960ies.

Hi Dertonarm. I agree with you about the common amnesia of recycling ideas. However, I haven't forgotten about the limited products of the pivot tangential arm genre through out history - recently I am accumulating data and researching on this genre. Yes, I am aware of the Garrard Zero 100 and I even owned it once but it was poorly executed. I meant the Thales Simplicity as new not in concept but new in execution with modern material. Sometimes the audio industry gives up on novel ideas too soon before it was developed into maturity. I guess that's determined by the market and various reasons but that's a different topic. I really enjoy tonearm designs and I have absolutely no interest in talking about the sound in pornographic prose as it's a mechanical device that I enjoy understanding the inner working and picking the designer's brain. It's an intellectual exercise for me. The Simplicity is exciting because for once we have a linear arm that does not involve a goddam air pump, at least for me. (I absolutely hate air pumps. No, I have no fish at home. Contempt can be the mother of invention for me.) I look forward to more products like that in the future.

I am sure the Raven arm sounds excellent but for someone like me, there's nothing new. For others, it's the sound that matters and I don't blame them.

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Hi Hiho, we have similar approaches to tonearm design. The Garrard Zero 100 could have been built in all details the way Micha Huber did it now. The materials, fine tooling - everything was there 30 years back. I guess it was more likely the overall approach and the missing care for detail which stopped the Zero 100 (... and a changing market ).
My reservations with either tonearm is the amount of bearings and moving parts involved in these designs. My reservations here are about energy transfer and the rigidity. But I will soon have the change to work with the Simplicity in person, - as I have already done with its big brother the Thales last November.
As for the Raven tonearm - whatever it sounds, my reservations were for the universal granted sonic laurels in advance. Before it was tested/auditioned. And then my question for unique design features or new solutions offered in this design were never answered.
I too don't blame others if its the sound only which matters to them - but how could they knew when they actually hadn't any chance to listen to the TW 10.5 yet?

I presume you've had a listen so if you can put the TW fans' enthusiastic claims and your own prejudice aside for a minute, does the TW 10.5 arm sound any good to you on the day?

Hi Jaspert, I have had the chance to listen to the TW 10.5 on two occasions. Both in private set-ups ( one on a Raven AC ) and with familiar cartridges (Titan i and UNIverse).
However - I do not think that anyone here would really appreciate my comment. Looking back in this thread and reading some of the posts here we can generally assume, that I have little clue and certainly are unable to appreciate or judge a great component anyway.
My prejudice was largely regarding the praise in advance - before any test or listening took place.
Did it sound good to me ?
It did not sound bad.
Pretty balanced, controlled, good and fast upper bass, nice integrated lower midrange. Good staging, not too detailed. Reproduction of height was a bit limited, but width and deep pretty good. I wished for a bit of more "air" and inner detail. This could be an issue of internal wiring maybe.
Bottom octave was not as good and fast as the upper bass - but then you rarely get that at all.
And hardly any speaker or woofer can show the picture.
It did however hold its own against a few other top-flight tonearms of today. But it did not outperform any of them either.