Graham Phantom B44 2 or Taela ?

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

This Violin bow concept is a beloved one

Touch me gentle

and even turntables, but here is the inspiration from a Piano

Form Follows function

:-)

Has anybody heard this?

That lends a whole, new meaning to "resin up the bow". I have seen those pics before. It always struck as being more of some artist's statement than any serious attempt at music reproduction. But what do I know. :-)