Any feedback on the Graham Phantom

Dear sirspeedy,
Thanks for your response. From time to time it seems that, whatever one tries to accomodate the often well founded requests/demands of (potential) customers, one just can´t win. Actually it is quite healthy to accept early on in the game that you can´t turn every LP lover into a customer. But this pond is large enough to feed all the fish in it and I am certain that almost everyone in the business of turntable/arm/cartridge making is trying hard to give the audience a chance to listen to their babies. When purchasing a 10000$table, 5000$ arm and equally expensive cart, what is spending 200$ for a planeticket and an additional 100$ for a hotelroom? A good investment.
Come to Denver and I deduct the above amount should you decide to buy an arm. Still there is no substitute for an in-home audition, with your system and no pressure to hear all the other rooms too before the show is over... I´m just a little bit too far from where you are to offer that service :-)
Keep up the passion and keep it fun too,

Frank

P.S.: I also believe there will be one or more Graham Phantoms demoed at the RMAF, an equally good reason to come.

It's nice to get feedback from two highly respected designer/manufacturers. Especially since a tonearm will be my next major analog purchase, one I don't want to have to do ever again.

Frank,

Well, if you are going to be cuting deals at the RMAF, I'm in! I'll see you there. I stopped looking at other arms aside from the Phantom after getting some feedback from Lugnut, Doug and Cello. I tried again to make it to listen, but since I could not, at least those are some ears I trust.

Bob,

The Phantom is still in the hunt, but a cocobolo wand should top off my cocobolo Teres very nicely. At least I should be able to listen to both @ RMAF.

This is going to prove to be a tough decision, as everything I've heard about both arms has been positive. I do know that it will be either the Phantom or a Schroder. I feel either one will fall into the final purchase category, since I have no patience for a butt-ugly linear arm. For me aesthetics is just as important as the sound. And both arms are very fine looking indeed.

Now if Raul would just say one of them sucks, I'd know which way to go.

Hi John,
Lots of Thai, Vietnamese and excellent Chinese restaurants in my neighborhood(and no Starbucks nearby...)! Drop me a mail again when that next trip is in sight. I´ll be glad to further extend your appreciation of my hometown :-)

Cheerio,

Frank

Frank,you forgot to take ROUND TRIP into consideration.Let alone the cost to me,or anyone else taking time off.In my case,from my business.Take that all into account and you'd be giving your arm away if you were so nice as to discount expenses.The offer,I'm sure, was meant in a good spirit,and appreciated,but the "little woman" at home would make me pay DEARLY.I guess I'll have to live with what I currently own,for a while longer.

Anyway,as you pointed out,and what any well heeled audiobuff already knows,something like a tonearm "SHOULD" be judged in one's own set-up,unless you are intimately familiar with the NEW system at hand.My complaint about the loss of good dealers,revisited.

I do want to thank you and Bob Graham for your fascinating(to me)responses.I'm impressed,and kind of surprised that in a HOBBY-RELATED site,the dialog could be such that they could garnish responses from proven designers like you two.Sort of humbles me,a bit,about keeping my mouth shut(although I have been at this 37 yrs)and am still free to express opinions "Learned" from owning said products.

At the very least,I'm really getting paranoid about my propensity for excessive word count!!Anyway,it is now SPRINGTIME here in New Jersey,and I'll be out practicing my first love,TENNIS,so I doubt if I'll be boring anyone in the near future,unless I decide to analyse new tennis racket technology should my backhand go astray!!Anyone know of any good tennis websites?Good luck to all!!

Did you know the bumble-bee CAN'T fly, according to one school of theory? This is the thought that first came into my mind when I read the posts of 3-19-05 from Frank Schroder. (And I REALLY won't have time to keep this thing going, but sometimes a question just must be answered, before the wrong impression is left untouched for too long..!)
The point is that I think that, while heated debate among the hobbyists and consumers themselves is fine, it is not in good taste for us manufacturers to try and "suggest" something may be amiss in someone else's design, thereby planting the seed of doubt in the readers and potential customers.
In this case, the comment such as "your new design is well founded but not exactly revolutionary" is something that I, no matter what I may know or think of another design, would never utter. It's just not appropriate. I have high regard to many other tonearm designs, including Frank's, but if any of us where to try an take the time to suggest a "weakness" of some kind, we'd only be opening the door to the shortcomings in our own efforts, which are always present.
I am not aware of the article that Frank refers to, but I am VERY sure there was nothing like the horizontal stablizer that's now in Patent Pending status; we checked carefully into the history of tonearm designs and found nothing remotely like this.

OK, with the Philosphy and Ethics Class 101 dismissed, just a few points before I have to get back to work, REALLY, and off this thread, if I'm to get the necessary things done on time:
My reference to the jewel bearings in Rolex was only an off-the-cuff remark that superior bearing quality is not that much more costly to make the inferior materials. I'm aware of the properties of sapphire/ruby, as well as tungsten carbide and steel. Simply put, I went for the more exotic tungsten carbide as a high-quality, long-life bearing component, since the cost differential over the less-desirable steel wasn't so great. And I don't like to take the cheap way out, anyway, especially in something as central to performance as the main bearing.
The other technical detail that needs a little polishing is Frank's correct assertion that tracking force will be affected by interia as the arm moves up and down. Of course that's correct; however, I see no reason to let that fact be compounded in fact by having a balancing system which will CERTAINLY add it's own additional forces to the arm as it's negotiating warps. And this applies to ANY arm of any pivoting design that places the pivot point above the Center of Gravity.
And one last little jab that needs commenting on is the "question" that the magneglide has higher horizontal friction than vertical. Again, I'm sorry to keep reminding Frank of this, but it's painfully obvious that, like a good attorney, the answer is known BEFORE the question is asked; all the better to influence the jury. The answer is, of course, that yes, there is slightly more horizontal mass to deal with - but only slightly - and due to the combined quality of the bearings involved (tungsten carbide main pivot, and an ABEC-7 ceramic ball-bearing assembly for the Magneglide tracker) the additional friction is mostly theoritical, not practical. If it were otherwise, then I've really been barking up the wrong tree with this entire excercise! In measurements, I cannot find any appreciable (read: none that I could see at all!) difference between the horizontal drag of the 2.2 and the Phantom.
As I said before, I have high regard for all other designers that make good products, and this list would certainly include Frank Schroder, as well as Alistair Robertson-Aikman (SME), Harry Weisfeld, and others. We each have our strengths - and our weaknesses! - and it's up to the listener - not us - to decide which sounds best. And without vested interest input from competiting designers, even on a friendly basis. I just feel strongly that we, as designers, should place our designs and theories out there for the public (and reviewers) to analyize, and then step back and let the music be the guide, not our competitors.
Bumble-bees really DO fly, and to try and sugget they can't is plain wrong: just sit back and watch them go if you want to be convinced....