Has anybody tried the Reed 3P?

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

Hi Sean, 'the Reed (arm pod) is made out of stainless steel'. As you can see on the Reed site their armpod is made out different material layers. There are two layers
of steel (top and bottom) and two thick layers out of granite for the weight. The cork and acrylat layers for the 'damping' , I assume.

Regards,

Dear Nikola, I think Sean and I were talking about the central structure that supports the pivot and is in turn bolted directly to the armboard. When you say "arm pod", do you refer to some other accessory that they manufacture for mounting the tonearm outboard from a turntable? Anyway, if the part that Sean and I are discussing is indeed made of stainless, then a stainless arm board would be ideal. Seems like Steve Dobbins agrees. Alu would be Ok too, since the energy transmission would be nearly as good as using SS, if not perfect. Ideally, I think a tonearm should be a single solid dense structural piece with the armboard or whatever is used to support it.

Hi Nandric,

I once spoke with Joel Durand who makes the Talea and Telos tonearms and he was of the opinion that stainless steel is an ideal material for an armboard for his arms.

I imagine the Reed arm pod is quite good. Unfortunately I can not accommodate it because my TT plinth is large and my rack does not have room. I don't remember the price of the pod but I think it was pretty reasonable.

Sean