One nice thing about the cantilevered armboard is that one can fine tune the spindle to pivot distance without having to shove around the huge main weight of the whole pod. I think this is a tremendous advantage in obtaining mm accuracy. And I don't know why there would be any danger of tipping or even tippiness; the weight of the main body of the pod would easily be many multiples of that of the cantilevered armboard cum tonearm. Another advantage is that one need not accommodate the vertical shaft of the tonearm in the main body of the pod itself (as Henry has cleverly and probably expensively done); it can hang there in space next to the pod, so you can easily fiddle with tonearm ICs, etc. And finally, such a set-up would be very cheap to make and require the minimum of machine skills, IMO. All you need is a brass cylinder, perhaps threaded at the bottom for "feet", a threaded hole in the top dead center of the cylinder to affix the cantilevered armboard(s), and probably an alu or brass or bronze or wood or whatever armboard with a hole at one end for bolting to the cylinder plus a hole at the other end sized to fit the tonearm in question. I really am enthused now; I would make that brass cylinder as large and heavy as possible. Note also, thou plinth-less ones, the size and mass of the bass on that Da Vinci and how the base of the tt is an exact match to the bases of their armpods, so as to provide similar levels of isolation/coupling to the shelf. This is the way it should be done, even if the Da Vinci is "showy".
