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Is this the best tonearm in the world?

Nero said:
The idea of putting a transducer on the end of a wavy thing is madness anyway, so I don’t think there’s any best way to do it.
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But what is the answer? Abandoning the format? Would linear-tracking tonearms be less-wavy enough?
 
I just love how well it works. It shouldn’t as the engineering problems seem insurmountable, yet it does. Superbly. A genuinely good record on a genuinely good record deck can connect a listener with the original recording/event in a remarkably direct way. One that stands up against any more recent/more ‘logical’ technology.
 
Tony L said:
I just love how well it works. It shouldn’t as the engineering problems seem insurmountable, yet it does. Superbly. A genuinely good record on a genuinely good record deck can connect a listener with the original recording/event in a remarkably direct way. One that stands up against any more recent/more ‘logical’ technology.
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I agree. I’m constantly amazed at the information that comes out of a wobbly groove.
Sometimes I think a belief system helps, e.g. I prefer unipivots to captive bearings, the benefit of which is that it narrows the choice quite nicely!
 
Joe said:
Everything about the Oswalds Mill ethos makes me ill.
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Yep, absolute gopper
You'd think with all that expense they could make it attractive to the eye also. People don't just buy hifi kit for its sound quality.
 
Frank Schröder is a tonearm legend. It's a very interesting design. When strength-to-weight ratio and resonance are so important, it's interesting that it is such a different approach to the Continuum Cobra and the Kuzma Safir. What's better in this application - a damped shell or an open truss? I have no idea. The truss is certainly short of drum-like structures - probably a good thing.

I took the view, right or wrong, that a good cantilever (arm tube) can be done in lots of ways, but the real trouble starts at the arm bearing. It's a shame Jonathan didn't tell us more about the bearing.

One enterprising DIYer on LencoHeaven has been building printed truss arms with SUPA bearings. I can't wait to hear those:
BiVj55j.jpeg


Wer - I'm really looking forward to meeting you at this year's BAM.

Exciting times for us tone-arm fetishists!
 
OMA gear looks like it has been designed and built by construction workers.
DANGER Keep clear!
 
I can only speak for myself when I say I think the K3 is an oversized, ugly lump of thing and the guys patronising BS was a total turn off.
 
If it’s not available without the turntable I’ll probably never hear one but I’m impressed enough with the Schröder arm I own and the others I’ve heard to want to, despite its looks.
 
sonddek said:
One enterprising DIYer on LencoHeaven has been building printed truss arms with SUPA bearings.
BiVj55j.jpeg
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I believe those are laser cut carbon fiber sheet and laser cut modeling plywood. Not 3D printed. You certainly could 3D print these. Not sure there’s a point to the triangulated truss design at this scale though.
 
Tony L said:
I find tonearms interesting and one of the few areas in audio where things are just not nailed down conceptually to this day. Many different valid approaches and outliers. I see no reason why they should cost more than a car though.
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I do think that as soon as you start to assess a tonearm you have two other significant variables. The turntable, how does it deal with the vibration and energy, mass rigidity, resonances etc and also the cartridge the suspension with it's compliance and damping. I think a car suspension dynamics expert would be able to add some real colour in turntable design. I do agree the 'beautiful' scaffold arm is cool and might well be the best tone arm in the world on that or perhaps a number of turntables. Not sure how I feel about the price, I guess watches are the perfect comparable, you can pay a lot for something small and functional, if I had the money and it sounded amazing perhaps I wouldn't care. But I'd still want to be comfortable that what I had for the money was actually justified. A significant of high end audio has been just 'trying it on' chasing the uneducated well off, I think this has more substance, in actual fact if I didn't know its pedigree I would immediately dismiss it as a novice engineer's attempt to build a lightweight rigid beam. If it was made of bronze, rosewood and a rare bamboo I'd be more excited :confused:
 
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