Goldmund Studio - still relevant today?

The Studio is "relevant", but I personally was never impressed with it. The Studietto was a real dog, IMO. These are just my private (now not so private) opinions. The T3F is a derivative of the Rabco tonearm, better quality construction, perhaps. It is thus to be judged. But lots of other people like this stuff.

Dear Cabbiendi, Can you say why you think the elongated mount for the CW effects an improvement in sound, apart from the fact that it permits use of a lighter counter-wt. There are two parameters (at least) that would change with this mod: (1) lateral effective mass, and (2) vertical effective mass. IMO, the reduction in lateral effective mass is probably good, and may explain why you've had no problems with cartridge damage. But the vertical effective mass may well have increased with this mod, since the effective mass is a function of the square of the distance from the center of gravity of the CW to the pivot but only a first order function of the mass of the CW. Thus if you've moved the CW 4X its normal distance from the pivot, which is probably close to correct, since you were able to reduce the mass of the CW from 200 to 45 (roughly 4 to 1), that would increase effective mass by 4-fold (16X for the fold difference in CW to pivot distance times 1/4 for the reduction in weight). That might be bad for all but low compliance cartridges. Perhaps that's what you use.