Tonearms longer than 12 inches

Who knows? Everything in analog comes back sooner or later (normally worse and super expensive). At the moment we see the comeback from
12" Arms...3 years ago I can remember that the audiophile community wrote, 9" is the best ever :-)
SAEC made a very long arm in the 80's but in a way, 12" was the way most manufacturers choose (in a time when real engineers thought about that and they had knowledge about distortions)
Generally it will depend how something is made and what design Solutions are realized but there are 2 problems:
The majority of tables can't even use a 12" Arm (the only way is a Design like Kuzma 4P or tables with separate Armboards) and the Alignment Systems for it (good ones, we have today endless of them and most users wrote, when they switched from this to that, the improvement was huge, so I guess :-), the most of them are not useable generally for all Arms, even when the marketing suggests it).

I think this is true: The longer the arm, the more accurate one must be in mounting it in order to take advantage of the theoretically superior groove alignment. We are talking about tolerances well below 1.0 mm.

In addition, the longer the arm, the higher the effective mass for a given material, which must also be taken into consideration.

Women audiophiles prefer the longer ones:)

Clearaudio have been making a 14" variant of this arm for a few years now....
See :

http://www.coolgales.com/store/cart.php?target=product&product_id=31&substring=

Ah...not active links so cutting & pasting required....

I'll save you the trouble, here's the advertising blurb :

"The Clearaudio Unify is designed around a unipivot sapphire bearing that sits on top of a precision hardened steel spike. Other construction features include a stainless steel base, and an aluminium tonearm bearing housing.

This beautifully finished tonearm is hard-wired with Clearaudio's Sixstream cable, a six conductor, Teflon-insulated wire, and offers adjustments for pivot height (vertical tracking angle), anti-skating, and azimuth.

The mount pattern is identical to the popular Linn mount.

The Unify is available in several different configurations:

Tonearm length Nine (standard), 10, 12, or 14 inches

Tonearm contruction Black carbon-fibre, silver carbon-fibre, ebony, or satiné wood

Termination Continuous run from the headshell leads to a one metre cable terminated with Clearaudio's MBC RCA plugs or to an external shielded aluminium box with RCA sockets

Finish Polished silver or gold

The ebony and satiné versions have a slightly warmer sound. Please select configuration when ordering below."