Kleos Sibilance

Hey Group,

I forgot to mention honorable mention to Bill for his insistence here that the issue was the tonearm. We just need to get him to stop being so shy.

So I called Donna again at Sota and ordered a refurb Star with the series V motor, composite armboard, and SME 309. They are going to mount the arm and I am going to ship them the Kleos for mounting in about 3 weeks unless they call and say they are ready for it earlier. Briefly spoke to Kirk as well. Nice folks.

When I switch back to the arm wand with the Shelter I will add more weight to that headshell and see how the Shelter responds.

I'm interested to hear how things work out with the SME 309. I'm considering moving to that arm myself w/ my Michell Orbe. Either that or a Rega RB1000.

Goatwuss, I definitely plan to post initial and later impressions.

Scary lack of specifications on the 1000, not even in the manual. Does it have adjustable VTA or will the Mitchell mod work? I am skeptical. Sales in large numbers does not denote greatness as you probably realize.

Your Orbe have the plinth? Why do they think it needs it? Not finding any info on the Orbe dampening, how does the subplatter or whatever work? In any case they appear to be nice machines. Was considering a Gyro.

Take it EZ,
Robert

I don't believe the RB1000 has adjustable VTA. If I decided to move forward with that arm, I would probably go with the shim-based approach. Once I get VTA roughed in for an arm/cartridge I don't usually mess with it too much, and I can buy R. Gandy's position that the increased rigidify is more important than more easily adjustable VTA.

No, the Orbe doesn't have the plinth, it's the spider edition. The way it works is there is a metal sub-chassis piece that has springs built in which sits on the kind of triangular piece. Where you can see what looks like black cylinders, these are actually just covers as there are adjustable springs underneath, where you turn a little knurled knob to adjust spring damping. The oil pumping platter bearing is seated in the metal sub-chassis.

I'm not sure about their perspective on plinth vs no-plinth - I think it just comes down to user preferences. What I do know is that the plinth can be added or subtracted at any time, but I'm fine without it.

01-06-11: Goatwuss
I don't believe the RB1000 has adjustable VTA. If I decided to move forward with that arm, I would probably go with the shim-based approach. Once I get VTA roughed in for an arm/cartridge I don't usually mess with it too much, and I can buy R. Gandy's position that the increased rigidify is more important than more easily adjustable VTA.

While rigidity is important, having fixed VTA/SRA you just can't extract everything that's possible from cartridges with exotic line contact stylii.
Perhaps most of your records are the same thickness(?), but mine are all over the place.
IMO having fixed VTA is like having a camera with no adjustment for focus. YMMV.

I only adjust VTA/SRA to compensate for record thickness. It can be really surprising how much adjustment is required to maintain a static VTA over different records - which can be easily set/verified with the Phantom arm's micropoise level.