What defines a good tonearm

Hiho, you can look here: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/red-herring.html

I've pointed the link to Red Herring but a number of other fallacies are described. I've found the site really helpful over the years as I found myself guilty of some of these. The more I was able to drop them, the easier my conversation has become! The explanations are terse, but its worth wading through.

Dan-ed, I came to the opposite conclusion regarding the Talea. I thought I heard better tracking and a more stable soundstage (similar to tape playback) with the Triplanar. However my exposure to the Talea is limited, and it was not a particular target of my comments. In my eyes it has yet to prove itself but is clearly a contender. I've still got unipivots in the stable...

Interesting. You are the first person who has made such comments that I know of, but I do understand loyalty.

I came to the tentative conclusion that in part I was responding to highly euphonic "imperfections" that I have heard before with unipivots in my own system.

A strange conclusion Lew especially when transposed alongside "the ethereal quality of the Talia" which you heard?
Sounds like you are buying Raul's claim that anything which sounds good must be attributed to 'distortions'?

You Guys kill me..Fighting over flawed(pivoted) tonearms is beyond me...

Where is all the NEW Thinking?! lets see some real R&D and invest some money in some real tonearm engineering...I have seen enough of the pretty wood arms...

Any pivoted arm new or old is flawed from the get go besides being only tangent on 2 points of a record other parts = (distortions)......the mechanical bias on any of these arms are not totally linear/calibrated across the entire record so you have torsions/distortions etc... if that is what you like so be it..

I guess I will just stick with my graphite composite Linear motor...tangent arm.....

Dear Halcro. Sooner or latter you will " discover " ( no ) better yet you will discern about " good sound " with distortions ( as the one you are hearing. ) and good sound with out distortions.
You need practice tobe aware and discern about but this needs not only a method/process to do it but a " new way " of thinking on the audio subject: new excellence level targets. I hope sooner or latter you will be there, good lucl on that regards.

regards and enjoy the music,
Raul.