Great write up Mik.
I imported a few Reed tonearms about 10 years ago when they started out and found them to be really disappointing sound wise. They looked good from a distance but when you inspected them closely you could see they were not up to the standard that you would get with an SME, a Graham Phantom or a TW tonearm, plus they had a number of design faults. I had several Skype calls with them to address these issues but nothing came of it. I ended up selling them off at a reduced price as I really "hand on heart" couldn't get behind them as they were nowhere near as good as my established references at the time, a Graham Phantom Supreme or a TW 10.5 tonearm. The TW 10.5 totally annihilated both Reeds and the Phantom and I still use one today. I even spoke to Frank Schroder about Reed as he really pioneered the use of wood again in modern tonearm design and he just smiled and mentioned a few technical things as to why the Reeds sounded the way they did. I also had a couple of 12" Ikedas and although nicely made, apart from the sticky bearings, the geometry was never great and these were always a big compromise getting the cartridge correctly aligned. Plus these are only really suited to heavy weight cartridges 20-30 grams in weight. I have only experienced 2 tonearms that I would want to own, or use myself in my own personal system. One is made in Germany and the other in Switzerland. I think you can guess what these are?
Although people often say to me there has never been a better time to buy a top flight turntable and tonearm due to the vinyl resurgence. I am not so sure, as the vinyl resurgence ended for me back in 2010. If you look around today there are a lot of "companies" advertising high end turntables. But do they sound any good and the people designing and building them would they know what was good or bad? I know as I have been designing analogue products and phono stages since most manufacturers decreed the turntable dead and buried back in the late 1980s, so it makes me wonder how some companies can basically bypass 30 years of work and development. I guess with the right marketing you can say anything. Proving it is a little more difficult...