standard counterweight vs drop counterweight

I also had a WOW! experience after putting a Gregory Kerry F-2 Titanium Heavyweight Counterweight onto my Rega RB-300 tonearm. Although it is a little more expensive, at $129, the improvement is so great that it easily competes for the best value analog tweak award.

To me it was a no Brainer, even though I have heard a good set up(Nottingham Horizon, Shure V, Rb250) without the endstub upgrade. Between the two mentioned above I would have to go with the F-2, from Kerry Audio.

OK, you have heard the benefits, here is the reason. First and most important the counterweight hard mounts to the Rega stub. Normally a tension fit the hardmounting cuts back on resonances. Second the low center of gravity provides for better tracking (less teetering).

Actually, hardmounting does just the opposite- it restricts the reactive energies of playback a means of termination and are thus stored and re-released, feeding back down the arm to the pick up where it's often perceived as an increase in dynamics and detail.

On my OL Silver I've used the stock (concentric) C/W clamped to the arm stub and Twl's DIY suspended C/W, which hangs a weight from the stub on a silk or nylon thread.

The suspended C/W obviously decouples the mass of the weight from armtube resonances nearly 100%. The sonic benefits were increased clarity/reduced bloat, particularly on the trailing edges of all notes at all frequencies. Removing that big hunk of mass from the resonating armtube clearly fed less energy back to the cartridge end of the arm.