Graham Phantom Supreme?

Hi Andrew,

Your description of the Tri-planar is right on, IME. That fullness is quite attractive, especially when paired with a cartridge that compliments it well. I have a Soundsmith-retipped Shelter 901 on mine now and works surprisingly well--better than my A90, actually. Ordinarily, I find the 901 a bit exaggerated at both ends but the Tri-planar fills it in nicely. It's a delightful arm and I'll keep mine, too, but I'm really looking forward to the Supreme!

Bill

I felt the Phantom II was better than the triplanar..

It is fact.
The Phantom has another huge advantage: It works on a top sonic level with nearly all cartridges, the Triplanar doesn't. You see it pretty often in pics with Koetsu (mismatch, not good), Lyra Titan (disaster), super with Zyx or any other cartridges which move no energy into the Arm...Bob Graham simply has a better knowledge about energy transfer, and what is important generally for a good Arm Design.
The Triplanar had its good time against Graham 2.0 series but when the Phantom became available it wasn't in the same class and the gap got wider...

comparison Phantom / Triplanar VII

You're preaching to the choir, although I do think the newest Tri-planar bests the Graham 2.2 I owned for years before the Phantom II.

Has anyone gotten their hands on an Elite yet? The inverted bearing sounds interesting.

My experience with damping fluid is the following:

Use very little. I initially tried ~0.25cc of the series 100 fluid. I then removed about a little more than half of it leaving the fluid touching the underside of the square shank and ~1/3 of the way up the bottom of the cylindrical damping housing. This was a lot better. With the original level, low level details and microdynamics were obscured with a weighter, guttural quality. Removing the fluid unveiled a wealth of detail, stronger microdynamic expression and cleaned up the bass making it also osounf more textrually detailed.

I'm considering going even lower where only a portion of the bearing tip is covered. Will provide feedback when I do but for now staying at this level.

Bill, let us know what you think.

Anddrew