Graham Phantom vs the Graham 2.2

Dgad,

Nice summary, and nice sentiment too.

Doug, everything in this world is a trade-off. One of the heavy advantages of this tonearm is that you can change different effective mass arm wands, I can't imagine ( I would like ) how to do this with out breaks in the wire.

Isn't that pretty easy? Look at the Basis Vector. It already has a detachable armwand. It already has an unbroken run of wire. Just imagine a choice of different armwands and voila!, mission accomplished. VPI could easily do the same with the JMW's. Moerch could bring their wire out of the wand near the attachment disc, loop it down to a stabilized point on the base (like TriPlanar) and then out as a shielded cable - all with no breaks. This is not a difficult problem to solve. It just needs an arm designer willing to do it. (In Moerch's case an exposed loop of wire might have been considered visually objectionable. Another personal choice.)

I'm not saying that I'm against " changes ", no I'm not. I dislike the unfinished products because I feel that this unfinished design it can't give me the 100% of performance till it will be up-dated again. That's all

Totally agree. Budget considerations aside, I'm sure none of us would knowingly buy an incomplete or inferior design.

You mentioned the TriPlanar as one example of an "unfinished" design. Which aspects of it do (did) you regard as such? Like any arm it has its quirks, but these are all easy for the user to handle. From a practical standpoint, anyone considering a Mk VII really doesn't care about any possible weaknesses of the Mk II or Mk IV. All that matters is what arm s/he's going to get today.

Cheers,
Doug

Hi Sirspeedy: ***** "even though I probably never will own one. " ******

If you don't buy the Phantom, maybe you can get the Airtangent. Good luck on it.

BTW, I agree with you about **** " don't think it has to be all that technical .." *****. With tonearms happen things that are very controversial and very dificult to understand, I explain this with an example in my own system:

somebody ask in this forum about the Lustre GST-801 tonearm and I think that Twl give an answer about telling that this is a good ( not exellent ) tonearm ( I can't remember exactly what Twl told ) and I post that this tonearm is a top performer.
I own two of this 801 tonearm but for months or maybe years they were in their boxes ( I only can mount 10 tonearms at the same time ). This Lustre tonearm is the cheapest, by a wide margin, of all tonearms that I have.
That question about the Lustre remember me that I have it and two weeks ago I take one of them and mount in my system, I have everything for do the right job on mounting but I can't find anywhere its effective mass for trying to mate with the right cartridge. So, I mate with my Dynavector XV-1 ( I already try this cartridge with five differents tonearms, including a Dynavector one, and always had a very good performance. The best match was with one of my SAEC tonearms. ) and big surprise the XV-1 never sound so great that with the Lustre GST-801. Why?, it is very dificult to say because the others 5 tonearms are all of them not only more expensive but exellent tonearms and mates very well about their resonance frecuency. Right now I'm mounting my second Lustre and I will try with my Allaerts MC2 Finish cartridge.

The Lustre GST-801 is unique in some design parameters, example: it is a dinamically balanced type but the VTF is apply through a magnetic mecanism ( no moving parts ), it is a J shaped type and the antiskating is a magnetic mecanism too. The build material is steel ( with internal non-oil dampening ) and Doug will be in love with its VTA mecanism and it is silver wired internally.

This tonearm has more than 25 years of design ( never changed and Doug : Koshin Electric, the company that build this tonearm, stay in the market for more than 10 years. ) and in its best time the price was only 500.00 dls and I buy it for 400.00 dls and outperforms today tonearms that have 10 times higher prices ( and I don't change, yet, the " very old " silver internal wiring. ).

Many things in the analog sound reproduction don't have technical explanation, at least for me that I'm not a technical expert.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Doug: **** " From a practical standpoint, anyone considering a Mk VII really doesn't care about any possible weaknesses of the Mk II or Mk IV. All that matters is what arm s/he's going to get today. " ****

I totally agree with you.

Regards and enjoy the music.

Raul.

Dear friends: This is another example of the " black magic " between the tonearm/cartridge combo:

in the past, I buy two tonearms MDC-800 from Sumiko ( The Arm ) that I never mounted. A few months ago I put on sale one of them ( I think for 800.00 dls here in Audiogon ) and in the first ad day I have 15 persons heavy intersted on buying this tonearm ( inclusive, I receive a 1,100.00 offer for it. ), it sold that first day ( unfortunatelly for me ). My idea was two put on sale both but after the people reaction I ask me why everyone wants this tonearm, so I mount for the first time in my system.
I try with the Denon DS-1 and with the Sumiko Celebration ( I can't mate with heavy weight cartridges because I have only the low weight counterweigt on the tonearm ) and both cartridges sound exellent. At that time my Colibri ( the 2.5gr version ) was on the Breuer 8 and sounding really good. I take the Colibri from the Breuer and mate with the MDC-800 and now the sound not only is a very good one but an exeptional one ( My Colibri and my MDC-800 born to be together for ever. ).

The MDC-800 is an exellent tonearm copy from the Breuer in any single parameter but the internal wires, and it hands down the Breuer ( at least with my Colibri ), the Breuer is one of the best tonearms ( for many people is the best ) ever made. BTW, I already sold the Breuer and take this money to buy another tonearm and cartridge.

Regards and enjoy the music.

Raul.

Raul,

You are living the dream (that's a good thing!) though I'm disappointed to learn you can "only" mount ten tonearms at one time. Surely you can do better than that. I'm not sure how you have time to eat or sleep.

Fascinating story about the Lustre GST-801, which I confess I've never heard of. I agree you can't really predict how an arm and cartridge will play by their measurements, even if you know the measurements. There is more involved in music and music reproduction than engineers know how to measure.

Cello's Graham/Schroeder/TriPlanar comparison, all in the same system with the same cartridge, will also be very interesting.