Vintage DD turntables. Are we living dangerously?

08-28-14: Lewm:
"What bothers me about it is the question of whether the pivot is really held "Rigid" by the floating bearing arrangement. I don't see how it could be. "

In the August 2014 issue of Stereophile, Michael Fremer reviewed the tonearm and wrote something about the bearing:

"The arm lacks a conventional bearing. Instead, the pivot floats on a dark, magnetic, light-viscosity, ferrofluid-like oil that you inject into a large opening at the front of the pivot housing. Before you do, the arm is too stiff to pivot; afterward, it smoothly glides on what appears to be a bubble of oil without visible means of support. According to inventor Akimoto, inside the pivot, a small ball floats on a “slimy rubber swimming ring that regulates the arc motion of the wand.” There must be a cup-like structure inside that holds the oil, and a vertical rod—the pivot point—that is somehow steadied by but floats within the oil. I couldn’t pull the arm to and fro, and yet it floated freely. Very ingenious, however it works!"

It sounds like the arm might be a modern remake of the Gray oil damped unipivot design using "magnetic fluid." But the distributor claims the following:

(1) Absolutely no mechanical contact at arm pivot bearing mechanism, resulting in highest sensitivity and maximum amount of howling margin (Which promises to reproduce rich but much tight base sound with no distortion, no muddiness, the most clear sound and wider dynamic range).
(2) There are similar type of bearing pivot, dipped in oil bath (Oil damp Type), available in the market, but still they require some string or another apparatus to fix fulcrum for arm rotary motion but RF, thanks to automatic positioning mechanism, requires absolutely nothing to interfere with the force, for cartridge stylus to follow the inward path of record groove.
(3) There might arise some lateral mechanical instability of arm with this type of bearing, but RF, equipped with the most appropriate balancing mechanism, assures the stability of the focus. This is the reason to be put the name of ""Rigid Float"".

So in the end, I don't know.

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This tempts me to try my SAEC WE-8000/ST as a straight tonearm 😜⁉️
It comes with a ceramic off-set headshell but I use a whole lot of other headshells which I can use without twisting the cartridges as I currently do...😎
What do you guys think I should aim for as an underhang....bearing in mind the Viv Lab uses from 5mm to 20mm....👀❓

Hi Halcro,
You might have a problem with that. The arm is probably designed with at least 15mm overhang and with an SAE type headshell, chances are the cart will be too far forward. In order to achieve underhang you'll have to move the arm further back.

If you have some kind of arm pod set-up, this might not be a problem. Otherwise I think you'll have to drill a new armboard. I have an arm similar to a Graham Robin and no way without remounting.

I believe the alignment is 5mm toward the spindle from the center of the recorded part. That would be 95mm from the spindle, if I'm not mistaken.
Regards,

Correction - the lead-out starts at approx. 60mm and the record goes to 160mm, so I guess it would be more like 105mm from the spindle.

I have a few records that are recorded much closer to the label. You'd have to experiment. VE has a free download protractor called Chpratz. It's a calibrated straight line with a grid all the way and calibrated with distance from the spindle.

One thing that peaked my interest was a comment by one of the reviewers. He thought the shorter version of the arm sounds better - less resonance and vibrations. I was thinking of getting one of those straight arm DJ tables just to try it, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.
Regards,

Instruction on setting up the RS-1A tonearm using underhang scheme. I believe the arm uses the tangential point (or reference point) right in the middle of the platter which is 3 inches away from the spindle about 76mm radius.

"Structure & Features of RS-A1 Tonearm" by Shirou Horii

You can use that as a starting point to experiment with the SAEC or other available arms.

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