Vinyl Asylum: REVIEW: Thomas Schick Schick 12 Tone Arms by amandarae Welcome Licorice Pizza (LP) lovers! Setup guides and Vinyl FAQ.

For Sale Ads FAQ / News / Events

Model:	Schick 12
Category:	Tone Arms
Suggested Retail Price:	$950
Description:	12
Manufacturer URL:	Thomas Schick
Model Picture:	View

Review by amandarae on January 27, 2008 at 18:09:54 IP Address: 71.104.20.139

Add Your Review for the Schick 12

---

The Thomas Schick arm is a 12 inch tonearm arm made up of machined brass and aluminum. It comes with a lift and and a wood arm rest assembled on a brass collar attach to the neck of the arm base, a generic headshell and the connection at the base is a 5 pole female DIN. It also comes with a generic interconnects with 5 pole male DIN on one end and two RCA’s on the other. Upon ordering, you can choose between a 5pin Din connector at the end of the shaft and seperate cable, or the tonearm wire running all the way to the preamp.

The design of the arm, according to Thomas’s, was akin to that of the old 12 inch broadcast arm like the old Ortofon. VTF can be adjusted by moving the heavy brass cylindrical counter weight by loosening the small allen wrench screw on the side. VTA can be adjusted also by means of increasing the height or lowering the arm through a single allen wrench screw on the side of the arm mounting base. The collar which serves as the platform of the lift and the wooden arm rest is adjustable and can rotate fully, or move up and down through two small allen wrench screws at the back of the collar plate. There is no provision for anti skate since with its length, some say its effective length is really a 16 incher, and the weight of the arm, it is not needed.

The arm should be mounted at 305 mm pivot to spindle distance. The hole on the mounting surface (TT plinth) to accommodate the base shaft is 21mm and the base collar diameter is at 50mm. The distance from the pivot of the tonearm to the end of the headshell, when attach is approximately 315 mm. The clearance required when the counter weight is installed at the back so that it can move freely without hitting any obstruction should be 100 mm minimum.

I contacted Thomas Schick to inquire about the arm on May 2007. After ordering, I received it on July 2007. Playing with the arm, the first thing that impressed me was how smooth the arm moves from side to side. Another surprised was that it really looks much-much better in person than the pics that I saw when researching the arm. For $950, I really believe that my choice of tonearm to install on my Garrard 301 is already 75% right! The sound and ease of use will be the remaining 25% as I evaluate how it performs in the context of my system.

Mounting the arm was fairly easy. Although I have some comments about this later on the review.
At first, when I hooked everything up there was a hum in my system! After further investigation and Thomas’s explanation on how the tonearm was wired inside, I was able to figure out how to make the grounding scheme right. The generic cable that comes with the tonearm is useless though. I suspect because of it not being shielded. I have to contruct a shielded cable with a Neutrik Male 5 pole DIN plug on one end and RCA’s on the other. Once the shielding and grounding scheme was figured out, I only have a slight hum even at 1:36 gain on the SUT at maximum volume on the linestage that starts from 7 O’clock as maximum attenuation and 5 o’clock as minimum attenuation. For the record, I only reach 11 O’clock on my linestage as my “full” volume capacity in my system.

Sound

The Schick arm, if it has a sound by itself, has a very powerful bass. But this can be attributed to the TT, cart, and overall system electronics also. I’ve searched the net and I can safely say that I have not found anyone complaining about the bass of the Garrard 301 table regardless of arm use.

The midrange is “big and wide” but accurate! The highs are definitely better than my SME re-wired 3012! Sorry, those are the only descriptions I can think off. I am not really good in “bulshitting” my way on audio terminologies describing a particular sound.

I will stop commenting on the sound because the tonearm is not the only variable of the equation here but to make it simple, I would say that compared to my SME 3012, the sound I have when using the Schick is very “involving”. The SME 3012 is a big time performer and I really like it also but the Schick is better in some ways, the most evident is how it presents the high frequency range.



Ease of Use

Once you become familiar with the adjustments of the lift platform, the lift itself, VTA and VTF, the arm is so convenient to use. Mount it at correct spindle to pivot distance and forget about it! I have use adjustable and fixed SME mount headshell type and you can simply placed the cart to the headshell and adjust the VTF, and you are good to go. I have done this many times without checking the alignment of the stylus and I never had problems with skipping or distortion.
At present, although the pictures does not show a Wooden body Denon 103 and 103R (from inmate Uwe, thanks Uwe!), those are the cartridges I use daily and where I made my evaluation for this simple review!

But for the faint of heart, or those who think too much, there is of course a protractor that Thomas will provide once the arm is on its way. It is in pdf form and you have to re-draw it on a cardboard paper or transparency to have the distances correct. The dimensions of the protractor are as follows.

Distance of the axis line (Y) to the left of the hole for the spindle = 27 mm
First Point (moving along the X axis with the spindle hole as Zero) = 66 mm
Second Point = 120.6 mm


User Comments

The most critical aspect of owning this arm is not to make a mistake in drilling the 21mm hole at 304.48 ~ 305 mm pivot-to-spindle distance. If Thomas can provide a fixture that modifies the arm base collar so that it can moved the arm plus/minus 7-10 mm (forward and back), then mounting it will be very “user friendly” ala SME.


Well, there you have it, a simple review. I have the arm in my possession for 6 months now and I am still a very happy owner. I sometimes move it to my Thoren TD 124‘s and became really convince that it performs much more than its price commands. I am happy that my researched paid off, that I became aware of the Thomas Schick arm (Thanks to Joseph Esmilla, my mentor who pointed me to the right direction), and that I took the risk to order one when the arm was virtually unknown and all I have are the words from my friend who encourage me to try the arm out. To Thomas, who was very patient in dealing with me and I never felt any pressure during the decision making to get the arm or not, thank you very much. When my next TT arrives, you will hear from me again.

---

Product Weakness:	See review
Product Strengths:	See Review

---

Associated Equipment for this Review:

Amplifier:	ATI 6012, and many more
Preamplifier (or None if Integrated):	Supratek Chenin
Sources (CDP/Turntable):	Garrard 301, Thorens TD 124's
Speakers:	Orion plus
Cables/Interconnects:	DIY
Music Used (Genre/Selections):	Jazz, 80's, Classical
Room Size (LxWxH):	20 x 22 x
Room Comments/Treatments:	Works for me
Time Period/Length of Audition:	6 + months
Other (Power Conditioner etc.):	none
Type of Audition/Review:	Product Owner
Your System (if other than home audition):	See above

---

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

---

[ Top of Page ] [ Contact Us ] [ Support/Wish List ] [ Copyright © 2024, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]

---

[ General ] [ Speakers ] [ Tubes ] [ Vinyl ] [ Digital ] [ Hi-Rez ] [ Video Asylum ] [ Cables ] [ Tweaks/DIY ] [ Music ] [ Films ]

---