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Vinyl Asylum Welcome Licorice Pizza (LP) lovers! Setup guides and Vinyl FAQ. |
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Vinyl Asylum Welcome Licorice Pizza (LP) lovers! Setup guides and Vinyl FAQ. |
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In Reply to: S shape Tonearm vs straight tone arm posted by carstensf on April 24, 2007 at 13:23:52:
Say you are a radio station and you have ham handed dj's....having universal replaceable headshells allows you to set up multiple cartridges so you can accomplish nearly instantaneous swaps to keep your tables running.Or imagine you are a mono 78 nut with good stereo LP's -- the S shaped tonearm allows you to set up a variety of cartridges on universal headshells. I was using a variety of headshells on mine that allowed for the best sound reproduction for each cartridge I owned. I consider the straight forward replaceable headshell this designs most helpful feature.
The advantage of a straight tonearm is mass reduction and being able to redistribute this mass as a means of improving sound reproduction.
The disadvantage of a straight tonearm is that you are likely to be married to a manufacturer's proprietary headshell in order to accomplish quick changes as described above. If you have such a tonearm buy these while you can!
I find it fascinating that I can mount a variety of tonearms and hear completely different quality of sound reproduction. In some cases tonearm changes will lead to greater sonic difference than cartridge changes.
For instance my Denon DL103R sounded pretty plain jane to me until I mounted it in an Empire 980 tonearm with a very heavy headshell. Then it sounded lush and full like real live music. So having the right combination is often more important than just the shape of the tonearm.
My favorite tonearm is a screwy looking unipivot designed by Magnepan. Thank You Win for letting me taste the fruit of genius.
This thing digs out inner detail better than most any tonearm I have owned or sold. It is a straight tonearm, carbon graphite design with the most impressively engineered counterweight system I have ever seen. The goal of a tonearm is to plant the stylus right there in the groove. The counterweight design shows the cartridge to function as if it has infinite mass at the stylus and allows the vertical tracking to respond as if it were light mass. It gives you the best of both worlds. I know of no other manufacturer that offers a better designed counterweight.
I guess the goes around in a circle and ends up saying that there are many more factors than the shape of the tonearm wand that go into making an excellent sounding tonearm.
Tonearms work as a system to help the cartridge function ideally. This is one very complex system to nail perfectly.
Hope this fuels some more debate about tonearm engineering.
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Follow Ups
- S shapes allows some particular advantages for certain users. - tubesforever 16:26:32 04/24/07 (0)
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