Thank you everyone here for sharing their positive experience, convenience and happiness with removable head shell arms.
One other thing - tonearm cables. Many years ago I tried several tonearm cables and have been using the Stealth Hyperphono for over a decade. A couple others were good and less cost, most notably the Silver Audio Silver Breeze, but the Hyperphono made me aware of what I had been missing; the differences were not subtle. From the many cable evaluations I have done over the years, I have found the tonearm cable to be the second most senstive cable in the system after the line stage to amp IC.
I see many arms today with cabling all the way from cartridge clips to the RCA/XLR connectors. If I was to order a new arm, I would want to talk to the dealer and/or designer about termination to a 5-pin DIN to allow for the use of the Hyperphono.
Over a year ago, I had such a communication with a tonearm manufacturer. He was certain that his Cardas cable all the way from pins to RCA's was the way to go but he did offer the DIN option if I wanted it. I appreciate that kind of customer service. I have no doubt that the Hyperphono would outperform the Cardas even with the DIN in the loop. The pandemic delayed that tonearm purchase but I still see this product as second arm option. It also supports removable head shells. However, his arm design only deals with the head shell's mechanical coupling; the wiring is still from the pins to the RCA's.
Again, thank you all for the input here.
John
|
if the quality of the wire used to rewire in a continuous run is not at least equal to that of what the arm is presently wired with, as well as that of the cable connecting the arm to the preamp, then the net improvement after rewiring will be lessened; possibly rendered irrelevant.
Similar thought when I asked a tonearm vendor if they can put a DIN at the arm's output as I was not all that excited with their cable choice all the way to the preamp. A vote here for the Stealth Hyperphono.
Imagine if one were to decide that our preamp needed to be moved to a different location and instead of the 1 meter tonearm interconnect cable with DIN plug currently used, we would now need 1.5 meter of tonearm interconnect cable.
If I imagine the 1.5m need in the future, I will purchase a tonearm cable of 1.5m at time of purchase. The last few tonearms I owned with attached cables all came in 1.5m length. A 1.5m length over 1m is indeed preferred to provide more spacing between components. Years ago I got a great deal on a 1m Stealth and I have always managed to work things out with this detachable tonearm cable. The performance benefit here easily outweighs the fewer options I had in TT placement.
When I set up a system, placement of the TT comes first, then preamp or phono to accommodate the tonearm cable length. The rest of the system layout is easy because of the availability of IC's and PC's with varying lengths.
To my way of thinking, that is essentially what happens when not using a continuous run to preamp tonearm wire.
Makes no sense per my above statements as tonearm cables are not only available at 1m lengths.
|
frogman - I indeed understood your comment to rewire the entire cable from clips to RCA's with the same wire as before but this time with no intermittent connections. We would suspect an "improvement" here. But hearing this would be tough to confirm as we are depending on aural memory from before the change that was hours or days ago. Only when two of the same tonearms, with removeable headshells, were installed on one TT, one with a DIN inserted and the other the wire with no breaks. The arms are setup for the one cartridge. Swapping the cartridge between the two arms would then possibly allow for quantifiable differences to be identied. My suspicions are that the differences would be minimal, very minimal. And then take the experiment one level further and drop in a tonearm cable like the Stealth or Transparent Opus, and put this on the arm with the DIN connection. Here, I suspect the difference could be significant.
|
Lewm - It’s not about any conjecture suiting me or not. And I did not disagree or agree on anything. I noted suspicions, based on cable differences I have heard, and that was it. The only variable in the comparison would be whether there is a DIN connection or not. Only when both arms are the same can such a test be made, to DIN or not to DIN.
One tonearm I have under consideration has a removable headshell. One appealing factor of this product is that the headshell connection is only a mechanical coupling.....the electrical connections are not made through the headshell as the wires come through the arm tube and directly to the cartridge; the only potential wire break here would thus be a DIN or some kind of RCA junction box if the customer wanted that.
The to-DIN-or-not hardware difference is what needs to be quantifed. Then compare that with a follow-on test between the arm with the stock DIN’d cable vs. my DIN cable. As stated before, my "suspicions" would be that the cable difference would more dramatic than the to-DIN-or-not case.
|
Raul,
Thank you for joining this discussion. Yes, my system has a lot of tubes. The addictive bloom and decay presence that I had 15 years ago is now much more tamed. I know you are not a fan of tubes from your many comments in these forums on their distortions. And I imagine showing you a tube would be like showing a cross to a vampire but I just love these magical glass jewels.
A cartridge must be truer to the recording but unfortunately the cartridge quality level final performance levels depends of other links in the audio system and the tonearm is mainly the cartridge mate that at the end function as a " tone control ".
This goes back to the recording studio's microphones, 100's of feet of disaster microphone cable, the mixing console, etc. Imagine all of the sonic magic that is lost by the time an LP is cut...or even the master tape. With all the loss here, does it make sense to be obsessed with parameters such as "tube distortions" and resultant system "tone controls"? Given the highly distorted resultant LP that ends up on our TT, we all have to accept that no matter how we implement our musical system, the end result is far from the live performance. Some such home systems sound incredible and others rather atrocious. This is life.
Regards and enjoy the DISTORTED MUSIC
Oh, AND LONG LIVE TUBES. 8-)
John
|
what tonearm offers both a continuous wire connection AND an interchangeable headshell?
Here it is: Tru-Glider Tonearm
|
about routing a Wire Externally for the purpose of trials .....
Now this would be a very cool test! I assume a little bit of painter's tape to secure the twisted/braided wires at the cartridge and then again at the back of the arm wand, and then secure the cable for the arm's movement to not be hindered by the cable.
|
I wish I had said that 😊
Indeed you did in your ET2 arm discussion. A posted picture here of the end result would be nice to see. But the thought of someone using this idea to try many different wire configurations with copper, silver, gold, platinum leads, and to successfully shield this to the phono stage. Now that makes me 😊.
|
Raul,
Starting around year 2000, I began to put many hours into cable evaluations. I have great respect for the Stealth cable products. In the mid-late 2000's, I owned two Stealth Indra ICs and many of their Dream power cords. That was about the time when my system began to take on a significant gain in refinements. But in time, I discovered other products that I preferred for one reason or another. Back to your favorite topic ... trading off one set of distortions for another? 😊 I did not try other Stealth products such as the Sakra IC as its price was outside of my "budget". But I was intrigued by the Stealth Dream speaker cables.
My cable evaluation results repeatedly came back with the most sensitive link as the IC from line stage to amp. The second most sensitive link was the tonearm cable. This is why the tonearm cable discussions here have my attention. I would have to say that power cords took on third priority. Swapping in a few highly-reviewed speaker cables resulted in minimal difference vs. other links. Funds were much better spent elsewhere and thus my speaker cables were constant for many years. I have since experienced how significant a speaker cable "update" can be, but I needed to do a lot of work first to get there. Perhaps with my system as it is now, evaluating newer cable models at various links would more clearly show which link might benefit from some new attention. But for now, things are pretty good here.
Early on, I swapped my "reference" IC with the one under evaluation from from phono-to-line and line-to-amp. At the start of these early evaluations, I had cheap Belden and Canare IC's. No matter what cables I had in the system, putting the Belden or Canare in the line to amp link instantly destroyed the magic I had worked so hard to achieve; the result was horrible! It was not a tonality change but rather a destruction of the decays and harmonic overtones. If I was a solid state preamp owner, I suspect such differences would not have been as significant .
There were many times when the evaluated cable was neck and neck or even preferred over my current reference IC, at the line to amp link. When I then replaced the Canare at the phono to line with either of the other two IC's, this change indeed brought on refinements. The differences here were not to the same degree as the line to amp link. Any such benefits were irrelevant if the Canare was used into the amp. So much for the nonsense claim that the "best" cable must always be put at the top of the chain. I had similar results later on with several highly touted ICs from line to amp that destroyed my system's magic.
Moving onto the tonearm cable, differences here were more in line with the benefits of a refined cable to the amp. And it was the Stealth Hyperphono here that stole the show vs. the three other tonearm cables I owned at that time. I was unprepared for this difference. I would like to try a "modern" tonearm cable but the ones I am interested in are insanely expensive. And others are from cable manufacturers that I could not wait to get out of my system.
Hopefully either in this thread or another, the findings of a "run away discovery" tonearm cable implementation by any of the contributors here will be shared.
John
|
Raul,
Concerning Reed tonearms, a few years ago an audio dealer had a TT for sale that I wanted but it was sold just before I contacted that dealer. I then bought the Triangle Art TT. A year later, that same dealer had some Reed arms for sale. I had read positive press on these arms. Sadly once again, I hesitated and was too late to purchase one of those.
Earlier this month, this same dealer had one remaining arm in stock for sale that he will no longer carry. This arm intrigued me enough for me to talk with him. And ultimately I purchased this arm. He offered to machine the mount ring for the arm tower and provide a spacer between the mount and arm to better handle any resonances. These were offered to me at no charge; now that's great customer service! Once I get this arm set up and live with it for some time, I will look to contact him again for advice on another arm ... perhaps a model that he now currently sells or that he has experience with, or some others on my mind.
As for Audioquest, after I read the rave reviews of their top IC at the time, I got one and tried it in my system. It was one of the most dimensionally flat cables I had experienced. No matter how tonally coherent, detailed, incredible degree of clarity, etc., that a cable might have, if it truncates piano notes instantly, the cable is immediately dismissed. Needless to say, I don't have a lot of excitement to try another Audioquest cable unless someone here can suggest a model. However, I have an old Audioquest 7000 cartridge, re-tipped by the Andy at the Needle Clinic. This cartridge is outstanding and just might be one of two that I end up running in a 2-tonearm system.
John
|
@pindac - I read again your comments on tube rolling while also evaluating cable differences. During the decade that I compared many cables, I did much more experimenting with tube rolling. It was 15-20 years ago that some A'gon members, most notably Albert Porter and Bart Posner, shared with me much of their in-depth knowledge on the many tubes they had tried. I bought the same line and phono stages as Albert owned, and I had the same observations.
The first thing I do when I get a tube product is to remove the stock tubes. They are there because of availability in mass quantity. But the true potential of these units is only experienced through patience. One learns/discovers a few brands of each tube type that bring on a new level of articulation, frequency extreme coverage, openness. There are some with wild tonal coherence issues, flat presentation, etc. But on occasion, a discovery can lead to an improvement that many would classify as a "component upgrade". This experience can occur 2, 3 or more times with one component. And if the component has a tube power supply, especially a tube rectifier, a change here can be as dramatic as a signal tube.
Some tube component designers suggest that their designs do not require tube rolling, or they go as far to say it is not recommended. But Michael Elliot, the Counterpoint designer. encouraged his customers to experiment with signal and power supply tubes. He was so right about the benefits here. It's this devotion to experimentation with tubes and cables, that can take a fairly good sounding system to be near, or at, or even beyond the performance of systems costing significantly more.
@pindac - If interested, send me a private note here and I can share some of my favorite tubes in the 6922/6DJ8, 12AX7/5751, 12AU7/12BH7, EL34, classes. I have no experience with 6SN7 based preamps but maybe one day I can try such.
John
|
Raul - I tend to not be fond of the word, best. The use of superlatives often gets us in trouble. Even when we refer to one product over another as better, this too is often not easily quantifiable. When I compare products, I think of preference, and at that moment.
I talked again with the tonearm dealer today. Two weeks ago he gave me the rundown on the sonic and setup differences of the tonearm he had for sale vs. two others that I asked him about. He had been a dealer for one of those. It all came down to preferences, the word best never came up.
The dealer told me the tonearm mount ring on my TT's tonearm tower is chrome-plated aluminum. As the bottom of the tonearm is metal, he suggested an alternate to machining the existing mounting ring. He felt that metal on metal was not a good coupling. Initially he considered inserting a 3mm wood shim here as provided by the tonearm designer. But today he suggested to machine a new mount altogether. He talked of different wood materials and other boards made of multiple materials sandwiched through a high temperature process. I shared the evolution of my system, my sonic preferences years ago and now. This lead him to suggest a couple of boards to match with my preferences. Again, we never talked about best.
With all the discussion here on tonearms, removable head shells, cable from cartridge to phone stage, etc., the discussion today with the dealer made me aware of the relevance of mounting board materials.
After I live with he arm and cartridge change for a week or so, I will tweak the arm's parameters per the dealer's suggestions, listen more and repeat another time or two and then leave it alone. Once I become familiar with the changes, I will cycle a few IC's and PC's in a couple places. And who knows, I might prefer another of my cables in a link that was not preferred there before. 😊
|
It is difficult to see where the benefits are for the mechanical interfaces on the Tonearm using the methods suggested by the Tonearm Dealer you are in communication with.
For my TT setup, the arm sits on a tower (cylinder) adjacent to the platter. There is no plinth. The top of the platter is 57mm above the top of the tower. A disc, essentially the armboard, attaches to the top of the metal tower. The height of the armboard is machined to achieve the nominal distance from top of the armboard to platter as required for the selected tonearm. The dealer told me that this distance is nominally 30mm for the selected tonearm.
I fully agree that a change of, or addition of materials, in an assembly, at an interface where parts are fastened to each other within the assembly of the devices on the TT, will introduce a change to the Sonic Signature offered.
Exactly as explained to me by the dealer.
Whenever there is a junction between two different materials it creates a reflection boundary which in this case would be trial and error to learn of the impact of the reflected energy at the interface.
He described the sonic differences of various boards he has machined for customers and his own setup. I have no desire to painstakingly try many armboards to find the ideal material for me. I can leverage off his knowledge and experience to provide advice to me, the customer, as to what material will work with my system and sonic priorities.
He said I could try the existing metal disc I have, with or without a thin wood shim, and see how that works out. Based on all he shared with me, I had no desire to do this. And he said that metal on metal will result in an exaggerated top end with added "detail" which does not appeal to me.
Ultimately he suggested one of the exotic hardwoods for my setup. He said that after I give this a serious listen, and if something is "not quite right", we can discuss further; he would send me a different board to try. Customer service does not get any better! The end result with what he sends to me in a week will be far beyond what I have ever had on a TT.
|
Just an update here. After taking delivery of a Schroeder tonearm, I soon realized that this tonearm has a similar cartridge interchangeability as the Tru-Glider. In the case of the Schroeder, the cartridge attaches to a plate which is then attached to the arm via one screw. The screw is used to align the cartridge around the Z axis at the two null points on the protractor. The Tru-Glider uses a detachable head shell and likely goes through a similar adjustment to the null points. Both arms retain wire integrity from cartridge clips to RCA's.
As for my TT situation, both arms would sit on towers. See my system setup for a view of this. Swapping cartridges for both arms is quick and easy....no fussing with the high-risk process of mounting a cartridge with its screws. Adjusting either arm's tower for the correct distance for the two null points takes only a minute or two as well. This reminds me of the adjustable distance settings I have seen on the Feickert TT.
I have no experience with the Tru-Glider, but once the arm height is adjusted for VTA, it takes maybe 5 minutes to adjust the counterweight for back-n-forth VTF and Azimuth. And then the setup is ready to play. Total swap time here is about 15 minutes with the only vulnerability being the breakage of the cartridge clips if one gets rushed or careless.
|
The correct answer to your question requires that you first know yourself.
Very true. I am fussing around a lot less with system tweaking these days. After a tonearm/cartridge update in a week or so, I just want to put a record on the player and enjoy. Looking to soon change my Audiophile status to Relaxed Retiree.
|
