Has anybody tried the Reed 3P?

I have a 12" 3P on order. From what I understand the only thing affected by azimuth adjustment on this arm, albeit slightly, is VTA. Now I can tell you in my experience adjusting VTA is no big deal. I'll be happy to post my impressions when I have this finally set up but as of now I'm not too concerned. The Talea is another arm with azimuth on the fly, also not at the headshell, and I haven't heard much debate on that so far. Mountain from a molehill? I'll find out soon enough but I'm not too worried. The other thing to consider here is the bearing on the 3P which is different from the other Reeds and should be a significant advancement.

As the oldest customer ( in both sense) by the Reed I feel
pretty embarrassed to admit to have just 'discovered' how
ingenious the headshell actually is. Embarrassed also because I made some 'technical suggestions' to Vidmantas about the headshell. My idea was to make the headshell exchangible and adviced Vidmantas to look at the SME 12 and Kuzma for 'inspiration'. He never responded to my suggestions so I thought that his pride as engineer was
'damaged'. Ie technical suggestions from a lawyer...
I now think that he wanted to be polite.
Well the headshell is, so to speak, 'composed' such that
one can use the azimuth part (or do without) and remove
the existing 'cart holder' and put the other one instead.
I just ordered one extra 'headshell' so I can install my
both carts which are intended for my Reed 2 A in advance.
With the azimuth provision on the headshell one can adjust
the azimuth as good as possible and than 'fine tune' by
ear with the azimuth on the fly. Or so I think in a pure
'abstract' way. I wish I owned the 3P already.

Regards,

well that solves the "mountain out of a mole hill"...sounds like he got it "very" right...

Nandric,
That sounds like a great plan. If the on the fly is only fine tuning I would guess the other concerns are almost a nonissue. I'll have to admit I've never been one to agonize over azimuth. I usually get it close and just go with it. This arm will make it easy to see the effect of small changes. It may turn me to an azimuth snob. We'll see.

Dear Jfrech, I am not sure how your comment is intended.
Anyway my own assumptions should not be attributed to Vidmantas. BTW I wrote to him and asked for his comment if my 'interpretation' is wrong or need some added explanation. The azimuth provision on the headshell is optional but on the 'cart-holder' there is, uh, provision for this provision. The headshell 'composition' has 3 parts. One can buy extra 'cart-holders' for other carts and simply exchange carts without the troublesome adjustments. I only recently bought the second cart for my Reed 2A so I had no need to 'study' the headshell earlier. The 'light' was switched on when I 'inspected' the Reed site and noticed the headshells as separates. I had no idea that the headshell was exchangible.

Regards,