@nandric
Nandric, surprisingly I have never dismantled a FR64s.
Dampening does not need to be provided by a lossy material such as rubber or grease. For example, if 2 different metals are joined together you can achieve bimetallic dampening. Example - Copper mat on aluminium platter dampens the aluminium. Technically you could argue the FR64 arm tube is damped by both the headshell joint and the joint between the tube and bearing pillar itself.
The arm itself in toto is damped by the termination/armboard material.
Personally with 2 FR64S in my stable I have heard the "upper mid brightness" on occasion but this also depends on cartridge choice and arm termination/turntable as to whether it is an issue. The Naim Aro arm tube is "undamped" but has no upper mid brightness with any of the many cartridges I have used.
No tonearm is without colourations, when one describes the sound of a tonearm one is really describing the sound of the sum of the parts - turntable, tonearm, cartridge, cable and phono stage. This seems to be the point that continues to elude the Mexican.
Despite owning many tonearms that provide dampening, I have achieved maximum transparency by not employing dampening, but through cartridge compatibility and accurate set up. When I owned a high end shop in the 80's my experience was that 90% of turntables were not set up optimally and that in many instances dampening was used as a bandaid for what was ostensibly poor set up or system colourations.
