What's the best unipivot to arm ever made?

Lewm,

"the counter-weight is pretty far back from the pivot point"

This is just the way the photo was made, it's not an indication of how the counterweight "should" be placed. The position of the counterweight will depend on cartridge weight and there are of course other positions that will work fine. The Telos is shipped with 4 counterweights and the user can choose the combination that sounds best for a given cartridge. I'm not advocating that the best sound is with the counterweight as far as possible from the pivot point; but sometimes it happens to be the best position.

Cheers,
Joel

Thanks, Joel. I did not mean for my remark to constitute a criticism of the design. Rather, I meant to imply that sometimes the "rules" of tonearm design are better off when broken, intelligently.

Sorry about that, 10.5" for the Talea ll. Have started saving for a 12", with the Telos at the top of my list.

Any thoughts on the attributes of the counterweight being below the pivot point?.

Having the center of mass of the counter-wt in the plane of the LP is said to result in less variation of VTF as the tonearm traverses a warp, or, I suppose, the normal vertical undulations imparted via the groove modulations. (But those vertical movements are, to say the least, microscopic.) Who, that can afford any one of these tonearms, plays warped LPs? Point is, I am not sure how critical this design element is or whether adopting it involves some other trade-down in sound quality.

"i use 15ips 1/4 inch master tape dubs as my reference and the Telos is as good as those in my system."
Mike have you cut records from the master tapes in question. If any tt front end can be as good as a master tape in your system then that suggests a lowest common denominator effect is resident. That is your system is only resolving as much as the lowest quality component. How else could everything sound the same - or "as good as".