Has anybody tried the Reed 3P?

Hi Guys,

First off, I am the Reed importer and every thing I say here is my opinion and it may be worth what you are paying for it...

The sound? For me the 3P has a more refined sound than the 2A. More air is the first thing I hear. The sound, top to bottom, has a feeling of a little more ease about it or as some have said, more fluidity. Vocal textures are slightly chestier. High piano notes, female vocals and cymbals are where the refinement shows most. For me, there are three parts to a note. Attack, bloom and decay. I don't hear any lack of attack on either arm which, IMHO, are as good as any arm I have heard and better than most. The bloom of a cymbal or piano note after the initial attack with the 3P grows a little more before it starts to withdraw. The decays are longer and seemingly cleaner and clearer. Maybe I should say more pure. Less artifacts hanging around in the background. The area where I do not hear any significant change is bass. I have long thought the bass on the 2A has been one of its strong points so I don't think the 3P is missing anything on bass in any way. It is as three dimensional bass as I have heard.

The azimuth adjustment change has been made so that the 3P now has azimuth adjustment on the fly. It works brilliantly I might add. It is easy, fast and solid. The concerns over changing the rotational axis is a non issue for most cartridges, again, IMHO. If the azimuth adjustment is less than a couple of degrees, which should include most carts, I hear no loss of clarity in either channel over the 2A. More than three degrees may or may not be another story but none of my favorite carts need more than a degree or so of azimuth adjustment so I did not test this. For my testing, I used three different MM carts and two MC carts. All of various compliance ratings. All tracked well. As a side note, one of my carts has a slight tracking problem on two different tracks out of hundreds I play. The 3P reduces the tracking error on these two tracks.

For those that aren't familiar with the 3P, it uses a single bearing for the horizontal pivot and two bearings for a stable vertical axis. It also has a magnetic anti-skate. The AS is a big improvement. Arms like the 2A, Tri-Planar and others use a pivoted arm with a weight that rides against a pin attached to the armwand for AS. While this works, it adds noise and it is easily heard. I always preferred no AS with the 10.5" and 12" Reeds. Not that they did not need AS, they would benefit from a small amount but the added noise was worse. Now I can add a small amount of AS and no noise.

Another area that is new and I can't say for sure what it is doing for the sound, is magnetic dampening. I wish it was adjustable so I could experiment with its contributions. Alas, it is not, at least for now.

Bottom line for me is, the 3P has raised the bar and in no small way. Not just sonically but for ease of set up. Sounding great with the least amount of coloration is paramount for all of us but as a seller of arms, there is another consideration. If the arm is difficult to set up, chances are the owner will never hear how good the arm really is. It matters not how good it can sound. It only matters how good the arm sounds with the owner's set up skills. The 3P Reed lets the owner get to its full potential faster and easier than any other arm I have experienced. I think the novice as well as the most adept set up guys will appreciate that.

I did not intend for this to turn into a mini review but I do get carried away at times.

Dear Vetterone, You deserve the counterweight which I promised to you under proviso that you should write more about the 3P then 'I have' in your first post. By looking
to your system I noticed that one of your Reeds missed the counterweight. I now don't believe that you need one.
What I need is some help to visualize the bearing 'system' of the Reed 3P. As with Kuzma's '4 point' tonearm the description 'uni-pivot' is ,anyway to me, confusing. I know
that pictures can be more suitable for the purpose then descriptions but I have never seen pictures of either with clear exposure of the bearing(s).

Regards,

Dear Steve and Nikola, Thank you both for describing the 3P. I can't quite visualize the new way of adjusting azimuth, but I take your word(s) that there is no step backward, only forward with the 3P.

Steve, can you elaborate what you mean when you say that the azimuth adjustment on the TP causes "noise"? Since the TP cannot be had without that adjuster, I don't know how you can arrive at a conclusion that it is a culprit in causing noise. (I would think that to do that experiment, you need a TP with no azimuth adjuster, so you can compare the two to be able to blame the azimuth adjuster per se for noise.) I kind of agree that the TP azimuth adjuster has more of a theoretical issue with the way it works vs a real world one, provided the cartridge was reasonably well built and aligned in the first place.

Ldvalve, What I'm talking about is that with the Reed 2A cum azimuth adjuster, you twist only the cartridge mount about its vertical axis. This changes only azimuth. With the TP or any other tonearm that twists the arm tube (I think also the Talea), you are slightly changing VTA as well. Think about it.

Lew, the paragraph in which I used the Tri-Planar reference was talking about noise from anti-skate (AS), not azimuth adjustment. Sorry for the confusion. The noise comes from the pivoted AS lever rubbing against the stationary pin attached to the armwand. On a microscopic level, you may as well be rubbing two files together even if one surface has a plastic tube on it to diminish friction. Having all those cantilevered units hanging out vibrating like a tuning fork does not help either.

Nikola, I wondered how many would catch the missing counter weight. You are one of the few. I did have a counterweight "walk away" at CES one year so I do need one...

Trying to explain the bearing system with words only for the 3P is not easy. It certainly is not a true uni-pivot although the horizontal movement is in fact controlled that way. The top horizontal control bearing carries a secondary frame that also houses the two side bearing cups. The two side bearings are mounted directly to the armwand. The side bearings control only the vertical movement. The top bearing cup is mounted such that a cam action can be activated by the small lever located in front of the top bearing. This azimuth adjusting lever will rotate the position of the top bearing side to side and in turn, will rotate the secondary frame. That action will adjust azimuth. Remember, the top bearing carries the entire armwand/secondary frame weight and that assembly is ultimately controlled by the single top bearing. Does this make any sense? I could never be an instructor. It might help when looking at the 3P pictures if you knew the side bearings were pointing down, not sideways as the 2A.
Hope this helps.

Dear Vetterone, The Reed importer without weight? I am not
sure about America but in Europe there also, uh, a figurative meaning of 'weight': not much of an importer. Besides a 'strange one' testing visual capabilities of his
forum (co) members with his system. I thought that the meaning
of the 'system' is to show off with our toys? If you are not joking and if you are capable to reach me via the new Agon site I will first post the pictures to you of both of my spare counter weights with description of their own weight so you can choose one of them. I wrote about 63 e-mails to Vidmantas begging for extra weights so he had actually only two choices: the asylum in his neighbourhood or posting the extra weight to me. As a very smart person he posted to me two of them with the hope to prevent more e-mails from me. Ie the persistance is an important characteristic of an real audio enthusiastic. This of course imply the 'symetrical' character of the producer.
BTw otherwise than Lew I got the anti-skate 'theory' of yours straightaway right and was amused with Lew's confusion reg. azimuth versus anti-skate. I always thought that he
is a kind of expert in (a.o.) analog matters.
However I am very fond about my Triplanar so not willing to
accept your theory about the anti-skate in general and certainly not in particular reg. my Triplanar anti-skate provision. Besides we already have had an extensive discussion about the Triplanar by which (nota bene) I followed Lew's advice and ordered by my machinist 3 extra anti-skate weights in diminishing ordering qua weight.
BTW I am not sure about your quality as importer but there is
nothing wrong with your writing capability. So I will pretend to have grasped the bearing system of the 3 P as described by you.

Regards,