Kleos Sibilance

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.

Thanks Goatwuss. Orbe sounds well thoughtout.

Tobes, looked at your system, bet that updated TNT with the Phantom is quite nice.

I am with Tobes on the VTA issue. Some of Rega's design decisions do not make sense to me. Wish the VTA was easier to set on the 309. It is similar to the arm on my Perspective (someday I need to get the cart lead I broke repaired and put a spare cart on that) in the way you raise the back of the arm and then tighten something. The JMW Sig has a knurled knob you turn then tighten two allen heads.

Not to go too far off topic - but my understanding is that several mm of difference in tonearm base height only changes SRA by fractions of a degree. I know that others have had different experiences, but I have not heard these minute changes in SRA angle make a major difference to the quality of sound.

There's still time, I suppose, but for me it's pretty far down my laundry list of things to worry about!