Mike, Better have some oxygen handy when you finally get your v2.0 Talea. I heard a v2.0 at my neighbor's house. (Yes, there are two crazy audiophiles living on the same street in Bethesda, MD.) He is using a ZYX and a Doshi preamp with which I am not familiar, but the rest of his system is well known to me, both spkrs and amps. The Talea did do some uncanny things. The sense of space around instruments was more 3D than I have ever heard, and the sense of the reality of the instrument as well, particularly violins, in keeping with the Durand ethos. The bass was a bit recessed compared to mids and treble, but I do not or cannot attribute that to the tonearm, except maybe a VTA adjustment was in order.
I did wonder whether some of the magic could be due to the wooden arm wand in combination with a euphonic kind of "resonance", for want of a better word, that could occur in the unipivot tonearms I used to listen to in days of yore. But who cares, even if there is any validity to that idea?