Has anyone had experience with the Schroeder Arm

Hello Raul,
Sorry to say this, but unless you give me the serial# I won't be able to tell you the eff. mass of that particular arm. Since this arm was likely sold through an importer/dealer I wouldn't know who the customer is(nor do I care). I assure you that, even if I knew, I would not disclose the identity(and why should I?).
As for the eff. mass of my arms: The Reference can be ordered with armwands ranging from 5 - 50(!)gr. eff. mass. So there are many different ones around that certainly won't suit just any cart you care to mount.
And who is "we", as in "we do these tests without influence"?
Make shure that gentleman sends the instructions along, too...
Cartridge recommendations simply refer to proper matching of the physical parameters, not the sonic properties.
Waiting for your reply,

best regards,

Frank

Hello 4yamx,
Hmmm, my impressions on CLD materials.... First of all we'd have to look at the application: plinth, platter, armboard, tonearm wand, etc..
I guess you were refering to the use of CLD in armboards.
Conventional("rigidly" coupled) tonarms depend upon the dissipation of energy (fed into their structure by the cartridge tracking the grooves) in the arm's structure itself and, to a greater or lesser degree, in the armboard(or plinth) they're mounted on. The use of a CLD armboard should help dissipating those vibrations more evenly, and when the right materials are chosen, more quickly, too. Every structure(tonearm) will exhibit different resonance characteristics, therefore armboard A might be better suited to accomodate arm A' while armboard B will be better suited to arm B' . To further complicate things, the resonance makeup of arm A', or B', and C'... will differ depending upon the cart used. By tightening cartridge screws like a maniac you only emphasize this phenomenon.
I use a CLD armwand for the No.2 arm(3layers), which helps to control armwand resonances, CLD effectivly cuts the peaks in the resonance spectrum(same for arm boards, etc..).
If you intend to build a CLD armboard, try to match the mechanical impedance of the arm's contact surface/material and use a "chaoticly" structured material as the second layer.
Certain types of woods are, for all intents and purposes just that: Randomly distributed hard/strong fibres imbedded in a softer compound with a large "lossy" interface area within the material itself.
MDF out to be a perfect material for this application, but it isn't: the individual fibres are too short.
Hope that helped a bit...

Cheers,

Frank

Yeah, armboards, but plinths, too. Been reading quite a bit on the subject relative to suspended and non-suspended tables, visa via a plinth.

For an armboard, I was thinking of giving a wood veneer, brass, Corian, brass (or possibly an Isodamp-type material), wood veneer (opposite grain direction) sandwich a go.

The effective mass for frictionless suspended tonearm are different than friction tonearms (unipivot or gimball tonearm). The armtube for frictionless tonearm is much heavier so it can absorb stylus energy. This energy then dissipated by the string, silicone viscousity, or magnetic field. Medium and low compliance cartridges are better match for suspended tonearm like Well Tempered. If you can find how Mr. Well Tempered calculated effective mass then substitute magnetic flux for viscousity. It's basically a Bernoulli equation for energy conservation. The reason that string supported tonearm are more musical than ball bearing tonearm because string reasonates like guitar or violin string. We don't find many musical instruments made of ball bearings. At the Rocky Mountain Audio Quest, I tried to get Mr. Well Tempered to visit the Teres 360 and Shroder tonearm so he can kick himself for not including magnetic damping with his viscous damping tonearm patent. It took over 20 years for Frank to get a patent on it. Of course, magnetic is a little harder to see than liquid even though electrons flow like water.

Dear Nghiep: Truly educational post.
Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.