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Making a "super arm" tone arm mods

S

spxy

pfm Member
Basiclly I want some comments or ideas on how to get more from a tonearm.
One thing I have been thinking about is how on most tonearms the wire are fixed internally for what I assume, are cosmetic reasons.
Yet these, being fixied in such a small space must be inhibiting the free movment of the tonearm bearings.
I notice that linear tracking arms usually have external wires, dressed in an arc shape in such a way as to allow free movment of the tracking arm.
How about getting a cheapish arm such as a Rega RB300 rmoving the tone arm wires completly, then fixing some allong the outside of the mains arm tube, then arching them in a loop to allow the freest movment?
I have experimented with the postioning of internal wires before in my Wilson Benesch tone arm and found very large performance benifits from getting the freest possible movment .
In fact one of the reasons Rega dont recomend re-wireing is because they feel many wires interfear with the free movment of their bearings.
Any thoughts, opinions ideas?
 
The reason Rega dont recommend you rewire there armis because so many make a complete bollox of it !.
cheapest , best solution i hve found is the incognitto kit , easy to install int a multitude of arms and bloody phenominal sounding for the price .
your idea of running the cable outside the arm is sound enough but you may have earth hum problems , i experienced this when playing with different types of wire in a rega , a few years ago.

just my 2d

regards BB:)
 
On reflection , i would say if you have a standard rega , leave it alone . If you are not happy with its performance the upgrade route is not a very cost effective one and a change to something like a Michell techno arm would be a better value solution and probably better sounding too.........if you have even more cash o spend this really does open the door to around a dozen or so, current mid priced arms .

regards BB
 
Hey, I like your idea of running the cable outside of the rega if only because it would facilitate trying out a few different types of wire very easily. If you do this make sure you publish the results for us!

That said, and based on my experiance on the great ammount of benefit I have heard from simply shortening the tone arm cable down from 1m to 10" I would recomend you fisrt look at making the path from the cartridge to the phono amp as short as possible (ala prefix). If you are going to rewire, just cut the current cable down as short as you can before you move to the new cable and see what a difference it makes.

Adam
 
You mean like this?
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Meet the Mission 774

Rob.
 
I already have a perfectly good working arm , a Wilson Benecsh.
This is intended as a DIY project, using a basic standard arm and tring to make it better.
The more expensive rega arms are just RB250's with more attention paid to adjustment of bearing , wiring and arm mounting and a few other things.
I belive that getting the lowest friction in the bearings is one of the most important things in a tonearm, and believe external wiring will have lower resistance as you could form a large arch or loop.
If I could get a second hand RB250 for around £50 quid and some good wire I will give this a go and see how it affects perfomance.
I have bben thinking of ways to mount the arm that will be better than the standard nut arrangement.
I may try glueing a after market threaded vta adjuster to my Linn arm board and screw the arm down into it.
This would be more secure than the bolt and introduce less stress to the armboard.
Maybe I will change the end stub and counter weight and a few other things.
 
quote If I could get a second hand RB250 for around £50 quid

if your granny had balls she'd be your Granda

like i said before if you dont want to balls up a prfectly good arm then leave well enough alone

regards BB
 
Why do you assume I will bugger it up ?
You know nothing of my experience in working with tonearms or my knowledge of how they work?
You havent acctually explained why it should go so dramaticly wrong, and dont seem to appreciate that some people actually like to play around with things.
 
ERR ...EMM must have struck a wee nerve somewhere !

Jiiim..........on the contrary i love a spot of diy........hifi that is .......electro mechanical not the house type (unfortunately)


the reason is say leave it alone is because the rewards are not worth the expense and trouble.........decent wire is very costly and hard to work with...requiring quite a bit of practice to get right

it is true that the standard rega wire is poor but why go to the bother when you have a fantastic piece of kit like the incognitto available..................of course you can play around with different types of wire and try and determine what sonic atributes this brings about . Also bear in mind that there are very few manufacturers who actually make tonearm cable , you could end up spending a bloody fortune and still end up with nothing better than incognitto for much more money.

i too have been down this road , i tried VDH silver and copper, Cardas copper , discovery copper , Audio Note copper and silver and i also tried Audio Note anvx and VDH external cable.
My conclusion were the ANVx is the best cable i have ever heard but expensive and i would prefer copper over silver if i am using a MM and silver for MCs . The most dramatic result i ever had was rewiring a sme 4 with some AN silver and making a arm cable from ANVx ............stunning result but at a cost of over £300
most of the other results i had were subtle to say the least and not really worth the outlay. The rega does really benefit from having its armwire replaced but i would approach it in the conventional manner using a tried and tested method .

At the end of the day its your choice ........i dont really care .......just a liitle advice

regards BB
 
It not the wire itself I'm interested in (I would go for the the most flexible with the best connectors), its the reduction of friction and torque on the arm bearings by looping the wire externaly in the bearing junction.
You havent tried this so can't know whether the rewards are worth the trouble .
 
.......but this IS the way did it ! .... with so many types of wire to try it was the only way.........saved loads more time ........i even went as far as running two types of wire to draw comparison.........but i guess you should do it for yourself.............i didnt find any difference in performance regardless of wire possition.............there is only 2 ways to wire an arm ......the right way and the wrong way .........regardless of whether the cablle is inside or outside the arm .............if the cable your using restricts the movement of your arm then its the wrong gauge of cable simple as that .....!

regards BB:)
 
GIBBON it would help if you didn't post like you knew it all.
"if the cable your using restricts the movement of your arm then its the wrong gauge of cable simple as that .....!"
No actually ,there are degrees of restriction , that is the point.
I appreciate your advice but I don't like it when people keep insisting something is definatly right or definatly wrong.
Often in hifi there are lots of different aspects involved few of us including the major manufacturers know them all.
By the way i have found a difference due to wire postioning in my own tone arm (which I do not want to touch) thats why I wanted to experiment on something cheap.
 
i have rewired quite a few arms...............not all of them......but more importantly.........i have rewired quite a few regas with quite a few different types of wire .

i know there are also quite a few arms that run the arm cable away from the bearing assy to prevent the wire from having an effect on the bearing movement..........i also know of a tonearm whos manufacturer recomends the twisting of the armcable to preload the bias

my point is ............your arm is not a unipivot.........nor is it an unknown........every conceivable mod that is available for the rb series arms has been tried and tested and some are actually marketed .
if you want a better example .......look at how rega have developed the rb300 into the 1000 , do you seriously think you can do better.........surely the chaps at rega would have routed the wire away from the bearing housing.....a-la Hadcock if it were to improve the performance.


i bought an old wheaton triplaner... the previous owner had rewired it with what looked like the same crap as rega use in their budget arms............this did restrict the movement of the arm..but only because of the gauge of the wire , not the way in which it was routed.......when i rewired with some VDH my problem was resolved........sounded way better too

to conclude i would say that unless you are a precision engineer you have little or no chance of improving the perfomance over the mods already available ie most of us couldnt even measure a tonearm bearing accurately, nevermind actually sourcing ,sizeing and fitting high tolerance ones ................and that along with good wire are probably the two key areas for improvement in most tonearms.

i think you got hold of the wrong end of the stick.......i wasnt trying to poke fun or make you feel stupid .........after all it was you who wanted advise .................. if , like my neighbour, you were about to jack your car up using the sill instead of the jacking point and i ponted out the error of your ways, would you be so quike to snap then ..........i would always view constuctive critisism in a positive light .........after all there are none of us who know it all .


regards BB;)
 
"if you want a better example .......look at how rega have developed the rb300 into the 1000 , do you seriously think you can do better.........surely the chaps at rega would have routed the wire away from the bearing housing.....a-la Hadcock if it were to improve the performance."

But they are selling a product that has to look good as well as perform.I don't think they're after the DIY look.
There is a device you can buy to measure tonearm bearing resistance from Wallytractor in the US, if I were serious about modding arms I would definately buy one.
Thanks for the advice anyway:)
 
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