Linear tracking tonearms.....

The ET2.5 or latest generation or Kuzma airline offer some of the best of the separate linear trackers that you can buy outright. I have only experience with the Maplenoll (ET2 are similar) arms and have been very pleased. I have not experience the cantilever deflection stated earlier but my custom design mods have significantly lowered the mass of the original arm, I ran a UNIverse for 5 years before i dropped it (argghh) with no ill effects. I have been highly interested in the Kuzma but just can't seeing dropping 5000 grand on an arm when i have one that really suits my table well. I really dont have experience with the high end pivot arms so i cannot make a fair comparison. But the Linear arms are easy to set up and consistently perform well for me

I agree, my Air Tangent is easy to set up and consistently performs well for me. I've never understood those who think they are hard to set up. I personally find pivoting arms much more of a challenge to set up and get them just right.

Ditto Trans-Fi Terminator. I have three pivot arms in the drawer(MS-505, EPA-100, Kenwood L07D), but given the steller performance and ease of set-up of Terminator, there is scant motivation to tinker.

Peter--on the linear arms, vta will effect vtf and overhang. Small adjustments I don't recalibrate overhang. I don't have a lot of real thin records so don't have to adjust much but if I listen too a lot of the thin ones, I do adjust overhand as my vta changes a lot. My arm is real easy to adjust vta and overhang. Vtf is a little harder.

Oilmanmojo
Peter -- on the linear arms, vta will effect vtf and overhang.

This is true for every tonearm (linear or pivoted) except for one - the older ET 2.0, and the current ET 2.5. The reason is the ET tonearm has been designed to optimize the VTA/SRA tracking angle of the cartridge.

To get a picture of the physics involved, imagine a table with a piece of paper on top. Place you hand sideways and holding a pencil marker with your first three fingers lower the marker onto the paper so it makes a mark. Note your hands inner position. Now place a book on the table, Place your hand on top of the book this time and repeat the exercise with the pencil marker. You will see that coming down from a higher point places the overhang closer to your hand. If you could weigh both attempts the vtf in the first - lower try would be heavier.

The ET 2.0 and 2.5 have a worm gear mechanism utilizing a cylinder. As you raise and lower the VTA the whole air bearing spindle moves up and down along the true center line over an accurate path to maintain position. Only the position of the stylus tip with respect to its position in the groove changes. Bruce Thigpen has this mechanism patented.

Oilman - your Maplenoll tonearm is very similar to the ET 1 as Bruce Thigpen used to be the project engineer there before he formed Eminent Technology.
Its an interesting history.

can be read here

03-02-15: Dgarretson
Ditto Trans-Fi Terminator. I have three pivot arms in the drawer(MS-505, EPA-100, Kenwood L07D), but given the steller performance and ease of set-up of Terminator, there is scant motivation to tinker.

I don't recall seeing your comparo of them DG ?

Analog stuff keeps going up in price. Digital keeps coming down. Leave them in the drawer. They will be probably be worth the same if not more next year this time.

Cheers