To those with multiple tables/arms/cartridges

Nandric,
Maybe you can change a cartridge and be ready to listen in 5 or 6 minutes, but I can't. Just taking off and putting on a cartridge takes me more time than that, without setting VTF and alignment. I mean, without your settings being perfect, there isnt much point in comparing. And then you have to actually listen for a while. For me, unless there is a great difference in the sound between the two, it takes me a while to hear the differences, especially when you are dealing with cartridges in the over $1000 range. It is the subtleties that I am listening for, not huge disparities between cartridges.

Dear Thuchan,

In the age of modern computing loading images should be a user friendly one step approach directly from the computer, everything else is somehow like working at stone age.

I couldn't agree with you more.
Instead of all the young Turks spending their time developing mobile Apps for the chance of striking it rich?........if some of them could work out a 1 or 2 button way to upload photos from your computer directly to a site like this Forum......we'd all be better off?

As Thuchan, Manitunc and Nandric have mentioned.......
There are several issues and methods possible for the use of arms to compare various cartridges?
Manitunc correctly states that one turntable fitted with two or more identical arms...is the most valid way to compare different cartridges whilst Nandric points out that using an arm with interchangeable headshells....allows for the same result albeit a few minutes delay for the changing of shells, VTA and VTF.
Thuchan points out the difficulty of changing cartridges on arms with 'fixed' headshells.....and I can identify with him in cursing the Copperhead arm as THE most difficult example of these I have ever experienced.
Having said that.......the Copperhead (and Cobra) arm is also the greatest sounding arm with the widest variety of cartridges (especially MMs) I have ever heard.
So the answer for me and Thuchan.....is to decide on which cartridge to 'weld' onto the Copperhead and Cobra arms....and leave them there for a loooong time :-)

On the face of it.....Manitunc's solution of having 2 identical arms on the one turntable appears ideal, yet one of the vagaries of turntable-based playback, is that different cartridges perform better in different arms.
So hearing differences between cartridges in Manitunc's scenario....may be nothing more than a 'matching' issue?

To avoid some of these issues, I have found just over the last 3 years.......that having many tonearms, most with interchangeable headshells....mounted on two dissimilar (but good) turntables.....allows for a really good evaluation of arm and cartridge differences.

But the salient message that both Manitunc and Nandric posit.....is that the aural memory is simply not good enough to retain the really subtle minutiae of these differences over a time delay of even an hour?
Most of us think we do retain this expertise yet those who have multiple arms and cartridges will be the first to admit that we really don't?

Dear Lew,

"The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain".

Which is why I don't think I can go back to one turntable, even though I was satisfied with one turntable all my life until 4-5 years ago. You may as well ask Casanova why he needed so many women.

I think he's got it?...I really think he's got it!

Dear Lew,

As this Thread is about turntables, arms and cartridges......pretty much anything analogue is relevant :-)

What great news about your procurement of the TT-101 Clock ICs.
Perhaps your tenacity will allow you to be the saviour of many of the 'non-working' TT-101s in existence?
Can't wait for the progress reports?