Has anybody tried the Reed 3P?

Chris, I don't know what you are getting at; it goes without saying that the armboard, the plinth, the coupling between bearing and tonearm or lack of same, etc, etc, will all have a further effect on sonics, beyond the choice of a material with which to make the arm wand. The base of the Reed is made of alu, so I would imagine that an alu armboard would work well, because there would be good energy transmission across the interface between arm base and armboard. I use slate; seems ok. Wonder what Vetterone thinks on that score.

Not that I care much, but it's "LewM" not LewN.

Lew - I am considering a second arm for my Lenco which has an all wood plinth. Sorry for the typo.

Dear Lew, I am sure that Vidmantas compared different kinds
of materials, 'metallic' and composites included, before he
decided to use the wood. I think to be the only one who owned the composite armwand made by Vidmantas. He however insisted on wood so I exchanged the composite for the Pernambucco. But what kind of research he made and how extensive I don't know. But if you persist I can ask Vidmatas to address this issue.

Regards,

No need to do that, Nikola.
I was merely alluding to the fact that on the website, Vidimantas himself brings up the issue of how different woods sound and also how wood in turn compares to various other materials. He then shows some interesting data to support the superiority of two or three wood types vs other wood types, but he does not show the data for metals. Presumably he did the experiments and found metals to be inferior in his test. I can accept his word for that.

I'm pretty sure the base of the Reed is made out of stainless steel. Aluminum would be much lighter. A stainless steel arm board would be real nice but would cost a pretty penny to fabricate. Steve Dobbins uses stainless steel arm boards on his latest incarnation of The Beat I believe. I made an armboard out of african blackwood which is one of the most dense hardwoods and it sounds quite good under my Reed. I may have a SS arm board made one of these days though.

Sean