Sammjohn and Inna, allow me to be King Solomon and harmonize your comments about when "men were men" and "women were women." You are both right. To talk about one and not the other is like trying to clap hands with one arm.
Now, as to the comments about the unipivot versus fixed bearing arm-- I've been involved with this hobby for 40 years. I've seen (although not owned) the old Rabco tangential tracking arm; pretty cool in its day), the fixed bearing arm and so forth. I used to own an old vintage Thorens TD 160 with an ultra low mass Isotrack arm. I currently own a VPI Classic with the heralded uni-pivot arm.
Sound quality and technical pros & cons aside -- I'll leave that discussion to the real audiophiles. As for me, perhaps just a simpleton, but I like to simply slap some vinyl onto my table, kick up my feet and google at Linda Ronstadt's album pic on Living In The USA. Back in the 70s, that lady really knew how to belt out a tune and was real cute too.
But I'd like to get to my point -- convenience and predictability. Yes, my Classic sounds pretty good. Yes, in retrospect, I learned a lot about DIY tone arm set up. But NO NO NO, it stopped being fun when I couldn't find a da*n cartridge that worked on that da*n arm. As I posted on other OPs, I tried the CA Maestro and Virtuoso and the Ortofon 2m Black.
For one reason or another, the cartridges were simply not compatible with my rig. It might have had something to do with tone arm/cartridge resonance in the case of the Maestro/Virtuoso, or unstable azimuth inherent in the unipivot set up not being a good match for the Shibata line contact stylus in the 2M -- or perhaps I later learned that some dumb screws at the base of the tone arm assembly were loose. Who know -- or cares.
After doing a ton of research and learning on A'gon, and exchanging numerous e mail messages with Mike at VPI, I finally settled on the DV 20X and the VPI Zephyr. NO -- I didn't need to stuff custom weights into the a*s of the tone arm; NO - I didn't need an oscilliscope to check tone arm/cartridge resonance; NO -- I didn't need a laser micro-meter to adjust azimuth in order to get the Shibata line contact stylus to track without distorting.
Instead, I simply slapped the DV and Zephyr cartridges onto that wiggly arm, eye-balled alignment, set VTF ROUGHLY in the specified range, then turned on the TT, pulled out my Ronstadt vinyls and enjoyed myself to some great music. I have no idea what the uni-pivot index of friction is compared to my old Thorens --- or care.
So, I apologize for this persnickety post. But IMHO I've been around enough years and seen enough come and go to offer my view. Long Live Thorens!! FWIW
