Graham Phantom B44 2 or Taela ?

How about a TW10.5 tonearm ? A friend has most of the tonearm mentioned except for the Taela.
He feels that the 10.5 is one of the best tonearm he has even in comparo with his Phantom II, Triplanar, Kuzma reference and Da Vinci. he owns a blackknight.

Hm, one of my friends is a collector and got from Nick Mason (Pink Floyd Drummer) a drum stick. I drilled it, mounted my Lyra Olympos, made some adjustments with a string from an original Keith Monks and being far away from a final product: It sounds very clean and has a real good drive (Pink Floyd Drummer). I love it.

Syntax, that's a great story. which brings to mind....

as Joel Durand was conceptualizing the Talea (before it had a name) he started with a vision of a violin bow as a tonearm. he even worked with a bow maker to help to understand the shapes and perspectives on the music. this was described in a blog he was maintaining outlining the step by step investigation and development from audiophile project to commercial product.

i don't know if Joel actually used one of Heifetz's bows to mount his Universe, but i could imagine it happening after reading your story.

Greetings all,

I had the privilege of being Joel's confidant through the conceptualization and design period of the Talea.

The concept of the violin bow/violinist has quite a few parallels to the tonearm/turntable metaphor.

Visualize two different violinists - 1 with technique that employs a fairly stiff wrist, and the other with a more flexible wrist/technique.

The vibration of the bow will "ground" into each violinist's shoulder and body differently. Because of this, there are likely different bows that are ideal for each musician.

Similarly, for the less than "perfect" turntable, the "ideal" tonearm may differ from one to the other. This is even before we consider the arm to cartridge match.

For the poor tonearm designer, he has to presume that the turntable to which it will be mounted is top flight.

This is perhaps the only "advantage" I have as a turntable designer.

From a mechanical and vibrational perspective, my goal is clear - to provide the most stable platform for any tonearm to strut its stuff. I don't have to worry what the tonearm is or how good it is - only to make the job of every tonearm easy.

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier

Syntax and Mike,
You guys are too much! Yes, Mike is right, I did quite a bit of research in the area of bows and made a few prototypes that were pretty close to that model.... close but not similar: even transposed (musical pun intended) in proportions to the corresponding length of a tonearm, a violin bow would be too thin to work. That created too much unbalance in the frequency spectrum. They are some elements of a bow that I am still working with, though.
Thom, thanks for expressing those ideas clearly. That's indeed part of my approach to tonearm making.
Joel