Graham Phantom B44 2 or Taela ?

I was fortunate, nay privileged, to audition the Talea a weekend ago thanks to Doug and Dan.With my Transfiguration Orpheus L mounted alternately on Dan's Talea and Triplanar, I have no doubt which is the superior tonearm. IMHO, the Talea is way ahead of the Triplanar.The amount of background musical information the Talea yielded vis a vis the Triplanar was significant. This is not to even remotely suggest that Triplanar is not a great arm. It is, except the Talea takes a very high quality sonic picture several notches higher. Am about to contact Joel to sign me up as a customer. Have some issues regd a locking tonearm rest which I imagine can be sorted out.
Thank you one and all for your valuable inputs/advise.
A more private thank you to Doug and Dan separately.
Cheers and Happy listening.

Hi Pradeep, it was my pleasure and a lot of fun as well. I hope we can listen to music together again soon. So you went home after a visit with family, and with an arm load of records and maybe a new tonearm. Nice road trip! :-)

Thanks, Doug and Paul, and Pradeep! Anne was really glad she tagged along this time.

Pradeep,

It was my pleasure and Paul's to host you in our home. We concur in what you heard. This was our second such comparison, albeit the first with an Orpheus, and the results were the same on both occasions. Thank you also for bringing your Orpheus L. It's a superb cartridge, one of a very few that's come close to the performance of a UNIverse in our system. It might have performed better still if I'd had time to really dial it in.

The Talea's superiority might also be greater than we've heard to date. My relative unfamiliarity with tuning it vs. a TriPlanar may have afforded the TriPlanar some advantage.

More important, we got to meet a true gentleman and a new friend.

Dan and Doug
You are too kind...I am almost blushing!
Seriously, did you get around to mounting the Shelter 901 on the Talea?
I suspect that it may be possible to coax a little more out of the Talea if the cart were to be aligned with a Mint LP.
Thanks for a wonderful time and hopefully in the none too distant future we will get around to spinning more vinyl.
Cheers

Pradeep,

For the sake of your blood pressure and equanamity, I withdraw my earlier comments. ;-)

We did mount the 901 and the results were as Paul and I hoped and expected. The Talea is now the second arm we've heard tame the 901's sometimes over-energetic upper mids (the Schroeder Reference being the other). On four other arms, including our TriPlanar, the 901 sounded edgy. I think it feeds alot of energy into a tonearm but the Talea handled it beautifully. The 901's no Orpheus, XV-1S or UNIverse, but on the Talea it retained all its big dynamics and also made good music, not hi-fi excitement. Proof once again that a great arm (and table and phono stage) can raise the level of a lesser cartridge.

Of course we couldn't resist slipping our UNIverse onto the Talea for a last quick go before Dan and Anne had to. I played one of our favorites: J.S. Bach/E. Power Biggs. The echoes are still fading, my head's still spinning. :-)

The better the reproduction the more superhuman Bach and Biggs become, and the tension they create in an aware listener grows endlessly. On the one hand there's a near overwhelming urge to respond viscerally to the rhythm (toe tapping, head bobbing, etc.). Yet if one doesn't remain entirely relaxed and focused one instantly loses track of the 3, 4 or 5 lines of counterpoint that only Bach's unimaginable genius could weave, and which Biggs' velvet touch, iron-fingered discipline and fiercely accurate timing recreated like no other organist. Thank you Talea (Joel). I've been listening to that recording for forty years, it's never been better played.

Agree about the Mint.