Rabco SL-8E Tone Arm

The question is- not is the cantilever straight now, but is it straight the whole time the cartridge is tracking? If you can see it flex side to side even a tiny bit, then a radial tracker or the Rabco will have lower 'tracking distortion'.

Atmasphere, yes I get that and I dont think there was any difference in deflection on eccentric records between a conventional arm and the ET ( with the dampening applied). The amount of deflection will vary depending on the horizontal compliance of each cartridge. The Dynavector arms use the same electromagnetic horizontal damping to counter the high horizontal mass in their biaxial design.
Possibly a case here for low compliance cartridges if we assume many records are off centre.

all technical things aside these arms when setup + working like they did when new... play music period! most others can only dream of...top to bottom they are excellent IMO...I have several including a highly modified balsa wood armwand one that has censor switch instead of the mechanical one...

Lawrence
Musical Arts

Dover, You wrote, "The Dynavector arms use the same electromagnetic horizontal damping to counter the high horizontal mass in their biaxial design."

Actually, the DV tonearms are some of the pivoted arms I had in mind when responding to Ralph that do deliberately employ high effective mass in the lateral plane, as you say, but do you view the magnetic device as a way to "counter" high lateral effective mass or as a way to dampen resonance in the horizontal plane? There is a distinction to be made. I always thought that it was to dampen resonance. I've got a DV505 and am a big fan of it.

New to this group, but since there is a current thread going on the SL8E, I'll ask if there is any indication of transistor issues in these? Once, I replaced the caps inside the battery box and things were good for a while. Now, even though both motors operate when "tested" the tracking motor doesn't move. I just replaced those caps again, and don't see anything too obvious. Any thought or recommendations? Thanks...