What defines a good tonearm

BEST Tonearm can only be.. when mated to "the" accomodating cartridge, mounted to "best" symbiotic table, matched to "correct" receptive Preamp, and owned "by" narcissistic personality type. The rest of us will continue the search....

Hiho,I auditioned the Talea 2 last week and it uses magnets to adjust azimuth. So it's not totally free floating either.

It was in a system completely foreign to me but from what I can tell it had a lower noise floor than what I am used to with my setup. Pops and ticks were less noticeable. I am using a VPI Classic 1 with stock arm now. I did bring my phono stage with me so I negated one variable.

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

my perspective is that the most significant percieved and discussed weakness of a unipivot is actually it's biggest advantage, which is the freedom to wiggle. it is the micro and nano wiggling following the groove unimpeded that gives it the advantage over a fixed/gimbaled bearing pivoted arm which on the micro and nano level cannot follow the groove as well.

A tone arm should not really follow the groove- it is the cartridge that must do that. The arm must keep the cartridge in locus. If you think about it, if the arm *really did* follow the grooves the cartridge could not make any sound! Thus we come to the idea of effective mass the the ever-important issue of mechanical resonance.

Unipivots however do not rule the roost by any means when it comes to freedom in the motion of the bearings. For example, the Triplanar arm employs an ultra-hard bearing that is so hard and so precise that Triplanar got investigated by the Department of Homeland Security because they were using more of these bearings than Boeing was. Triplanar maintains that a problem with all needle-and-cup bearings is that the bearings get damaged after only a small amount of use- whether gimbaled or unipivot design. That is why the bearings they use are so hard- 7 or 8 grades harder than the bearings in an SME 5.

The Triplanar has an adjustable azimuth system consisting of a worm gear that can tilt the arm tube. If you look at how a cutting lathe is built, its obvious that the azimuth of the cutterhead never changes- the cutter assembly rides on a extremely precise machined stainless set of tracks with stainless wheels. As far as I have seen, (and microscopic motion being the nature of LP reproduction) only a gimbaled arm can have the same kind of azimuth accuracy.

Thanks Ralph. So far, your explanation makes the most sense to me. Next time around, in my next life, I check out the Triplanar!

Best