Tonearm recommendations, thoughts, favorites?

SnowmaNick said:
Anyone here have any experience or thoughts on tangential tracking arms? The Clear Audio I’ve always written them off as audio exotica, but Clear Audio has a relatively affordable option in the TT5.
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The review states the vertical "drag" is 10 mg and lateral is 20 mg. Effective mass is 6-7 grams - don't try your Denon 103 without tweaking the mass. Absolute leveling is required to prevent the equivalent of "skating" forces on a pivot arm. Economical depends on your point of view - list price for my pivoted Sorane SA1.2 is less than half the TT5. Linear arms are interesting, but I will go with the internal slightly twisted wire inside my pivoted arm over the hanging out wire on the linear arm or certain unipivot arms. Clearaudio makes good quality stuff that is consistently over priced - believe me I know. I enjoy my Clearaudio setup as long as I don't dwell on the cost. I still complain even though some of it was gifted to me.
 
SnowmaNick said:
Anyone here have any experience or thoughts on tangential tracking arms? The Clear Audio I’ve always written them off as audio exotica, but Clear Audio has a relatively affordable option in the TT5.
Click to expand...
More opinion, no experience. I’ve not seen a whole lot of evidence that pivoted tonearms audibly underperform tangenial ones. I get the theoretical advantages, but vinyl as medium has a lot of inherent limitations.

A center hole drilled 1 mm off center is likely to create more distortion than a 10” pivoted vs tangential arm.
 
SnowmaNick said:
Anyone here have any experience or thoughts on tangential tracking arms? The Clear Audio I’ve always written them off as audio exotica, but Clear Audio has a relatively affordable option in the TT5.
Click to expand...
I fiddled with the Eminent Technology 2 for several years and it had its wonderful moments but man was it fussy. A wandering soundstage, lack of serious bass and, finally, an exploding surge tank put me off it. Certainly not helping was the HW 19 mk iv supporting the arm which added to the moveable soundstage. This “feature” was most noticeable when listening to a well recorded symphony or opera. It was over 30 years ago and I’m sure technology has improved but I would want to have the opportunity to live with one for a while to see if its requirements weren’t too much of a bother. As noted, the ET did have its moments of glorious sound.
 
This one is for the geeks and nerds only...

I found this whitepaper from 1977 which describes the "audible effects of mechanical resonances in turntables". What I found particularly fascinating was how differently tonearms performed using the same turntable and cartridge. The only person I know today who still performs these measurements for mass publication is Paul Miller.

 
Angsty said:
This one is for the geeks and nerds only...

I found this whitepaper from 1977 which describes the "audible effects of mechanical resonances in turntables". What I found particularly fascinating was how differently tonearms performed using the same turntable and cartridge. The only person I know today who still performs these measurements for mass publication is Paul Miller.

Click to expand...
For non-nerds & geeks, the short version - "turntables are clusterfucks".
 
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