TW-Acustic Arm

Hi Dertonarm,

Thanks for giving some context to your impression on the said arm. Balanced view i thought and I appreciate that.

Things do tend to get a bit headed between the TW fans and some detractors so you get a lot of noise in a big thread.

Hiho, no need to leave - we never actually had a discussion about the Raven TW tonearm here. Your questions and remarks regarding the M. Huber tonearms were about the only ones about tonearm design in this thread.

The Thales/Simplicity tonearms design do indeed focus on the zero tangential error. But to me it seems a bit like jumping out of the frying pan and straight into the fire.
So far my impression is that the mechanical (and therefor the sonic ...) trade-off for close to zero tangential tracking error is way too high. The increase in moving parts and bearings does heavily interfere with energy transfer and rigidity.

Yes, - how about someone opening up a thread about zero error pivot tonearms in general or the Thales principle tonearms in specific ?

I will venture a comment on the Thales principle.

It seems to me, neither a trained physicist nor engineer, that the best and highest purpose of a Thales-type design would be to create a high inertia mass at the end of a tonearm and hang a cartridge off it. If the high mass headshell mass had an EXCELLENT horizontal bearing, A-N-D the record was free of warps (and perfectly centered around the spindle hole), then the concept should work very well. The real problem is that...

a) with a light headshell which allows the arm to deal with vertical plane issues, there are inherent weaknesses in the coupling of parts in the arm.

b) with a very heavy mass and rigid arm structure, the cantilever of most carts (and the inertia of the headshell mass) would mean that warped records would have problems.

That said, with vacuum-held flat records, or records put through the "Record Flatter" that concept has real potential merit (as long as the hole is not off-center).

Nuf said for a guy who don't know...

Hm, the most interesting facts are from non-TW users. What does that mean?

Back in January, dertonarm said his new player would be a the Munich show. dertonarm, I didn't see any product from you. Did I miss it or was the product not finished in time?