Thales Simplicity tonearm review in Stereophile.


Michael Fremer's review of the Thales Simplicity tonearm in this January's Stereophile is pretty brutal. Are there any owners of this tonearm that would take except to his conclusions?
sarcher30
I agree with him in suspended turntables, I took some meditions from an Avid Volvere and they was horrible

Regards
I've heard the arm, own the arm and the TTT-C. Fremer was understandably annoyed that he totalled his Lyra, but really, if you turn the mounting tool upside down without the cartridge being secured by screws you'd have to be living on the space station if you didn't expect it to drop to the floor. Having said that, my arm moves freely, tracks brilliantly, is dynamic and has no trace o the inner groove distortion that I heard on my Kuzma Stogi Reference and with a 4 Point, that's why I bought it.
Apparently the US agent 'adjusted' every arm that he received and the bearings were then malfunctioning.
01-12-14: Proftournesol: "Apparently the US agent 'adjusted' every arm that he received and the bearings were then malfunctioning."
I wonder if this is the case in a review from a French magazine as the headshell is installed completely wrong; it's reversed! The funny part is that it got a glowing review!* That's just unbelievable! I wonder if their local distributor re-installed the headshell mounting plate and had it backward!

Check out the pictures:

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If the sonic impression was based on the performance of the arm in the pictures, it would've had ton of tracking errors and distortions.

* (I don't read French but used Google Translate to get the gist of the review.)

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Yes, the French review photo has the headshell mounted back to front! Maybe it's better for playing records backwards and deciphering hidden lyrics?
Yeah, the alignment would be way off. On the other hand, if you could make up for that, by changing the P2S distance on a table with a pivoting arm board. Having the headshell backward would allow you to get to the cartridge screws, and you would be able to adjust alignment like a normal arm. Instead of using that funky alignment jig it comes with. Unless having the headshell plate backwards would throw it's geometry off. Which it probably would.