i use a tonearm board that adopts constrained layer damping construction,it also only touches the tt plinth by 3 tiny contact points. it has bettered one of panzerholz and any others i have used in the past.
I embraced their research and have had my LP12 and speaker drivers setup with a torque screwdriver since 2012. Nothing new here, doing it by feel doesn’t work.
Their “research” will only be ‘doing it by feel’ and then measuring their preferred setting. Fine if you are part of a flock, but if you are doing your own thing with combinations of kit no one else is using then you do actually have to think for yourself now and again! I’d also argue a Linn dealer will likely be highly tuned into the Linn house sound, which is a very distinct thing that not everyone wants by any means.
It has been known for a very long while that the old Rega Planar 2 and 3 sound better with the big arm base nut just gently nipped-up to the point you can still use the cueing arm without the armbase moving, but no more than that. I strongly recommend trying that if you have one of these decks, or a deck with an RB250-300. Just tight enough so you can still use the cueing arm!
The thing about tight and rigid....these do not eliminate vibrations, just push them into a higher frequency with a high Q.
I’ve seen dealers who have been on Linn “training” courses absolutely butcher kit. Watching one set up a friend’s LP12 back in the ‘80s was the point I started insisting on doing everything myself. I suspect the vast majority of big dents you find in the VTA adjustment on Ittoks (which can easily destroy the lateral ball races) were done by dealers. Very few people who had paid £3-400 for an arm would actually do that level of damage themselves! Same with all the ugly chewed-up headshells. I’ve watched it happen first hand! Rega and others learned from this and supply a torque wrench, which is not high-torque at all (I can’t remember the exact Nm figure, but it isn’t much at all on a Linn dealer scale!).
Unfortunately there's no training for mechanical sympathy, I think it's just natural feel.
What’s it made of?
Must have other materials if it’s CLD?its made of aluminium.
I like the classic aesthetic of the arm with its shell too much to use a “better” one, but it would be interesting to try at some point with felt decoupling and I’m certainly curious to know if many have experimented with these type of isolation products, especially if you are using them with 1980s “rigid” tonearms (Linn, Rega, Mission, Zeta etc), i.e. effectively kicking that whole ‘closed loop’ ideology into the weeds!
well yes it does,it also has a viscous elastic layer otherwise as you say it wouldn't be cldMust have other materials if it’s CLD?