Looking for a great arm that is low maintenence

Nrchy,

I'm sure you'll be thrilled with your new rig. I'm familiar with the arm and cartridge of course and they're a great combination. I've never heard anyone who didn't like their SOTA. Assuming your model doesn't have the arm-compatibility issue that SirSpeedy's did all should be well.

Here's my suggestion for mounting the arm and shipping safely, which are two different but equally valid concerns. Have SOTA drill the armboard and test mount the TriPlanar. When all is good, they should dismount the arm and ship it seperately in its original carton. You'll want to have that anyway, both to store all the extra bits the arm comes with and in case you ever need to ship the arm for any reason. The TriPlanar box is custom fitted to hold the arm and its components safely.

SOTA can then pack and ship the table as they always do, without worrying about the arm flopping about in transit.

Since SOTA will have pre-drilled the three mounting holes, re-mounting the TriPlanar on the table will be child's play. It's literally a two minute job that's impossible to mess up. Tip: pick up three nylon washers to use beneath the screw heads, to prevent scratching the arm's mounting plate. Other than that the arm comes with everything you'll need, including tools and a re-badged version of the TurnTableBasics protractor.

One word of caution that you should pass on to SOTA: have them triple check the spindle-to-pivot dimension BEFORE they drill the mounting holes. They should not blindly trust to the accuracy of the drilling jig supplied with the arm. (Trust me on this one.)

Hope you're enjoying the wait, anticipation's half the fun!
Doug

One more tip: have SOTA ship the arm to you by 1- or 2-day air, not by ground. It doesn't weigh much and it's worth the few extra dollars.

Mine came by UPS ground and they took 7 days to get from the dealer to me during July. They apparently plopped it upside down in a 130 degree truck for most of that time: every square mm of that arm was coated in silicone oil that had leaked from the damping cylinder.

Now a TriPlanar has a LOT of square mm's. It took me four hours with cloths, Q-tips and alchohol to clean up the mess. Not much fun, but it did make me intimately familiar with each and every part of the arm. In the end I'm ALMOST glad it happened. ;-)

Nrchy,Doug IS right on the money.Take the advise seriously!

Doug and Sirspeedy - I will have the cosmos and the rest shipped overnight, even though regular UPS is overnight from Chicago. I don't want to take any chances.

The rest of the advice you offer is also of experience, and therefore wise. I will follow your recommendations. I have been tempted to just drive down there and get it myself. It's only a few hours...

Doug, you're starting to sound like Larry. He told me the same thing about anticipation when I talked to him yesterday.

I have been thinking about getting a set of Wally Tools for setting the cosmos/triplaner/zyx combo up, any thoughts on the need for the tools?

Thanks

Doug, you're starting to sound like Larry.

One of us has surely been insulted, though I really can't say which.