How important is the tonearm?


I am presently shopping for a new tonearm for my new turntable. I looked at basic arm like the Jelco (500$) but also at arms like Reed, Graham, Tri-Planar all costing over 4000$.

The turntable is a TTWeights Gem Ultra and the cartridge I have on hand is a brand new Benz Ruby 3.

Here is a couple of questions for the analogue experts.

1. Is the quality of the tonearm important?

2. Is it easy to hear the difference between expensive tonearm (Ex: Graham Phantom) vs a cheaper Jelco (Approx. 500$)?

3. What makes a good arm?

Any comments from analogues expert?
acadie

Showing 5 responses by davide256

I worked a number of years ago in a speciality business where all we sold were phono cartridges and tone arms. There are some basic principles

1)matching a tone arm and cartridge is like matching a car and a shock aborber... what you want is for the arm to "hug the road". That translates into lightweight soft suspension cartridges should be in light tone arms, heavy stiff suspension cartridges should be in heavier arms. A mismatch means wow and flutter, poor tracking, a suspension that bottoms out on imperfectly flat vinyl.

2) the bearing assembly is critical, arm should move easily up and down, no wobble. the meet point for the bearings should be machined to high tolerance with the highest durability steel

3) the easiest test of a tonearm/cartridge match is a female vocalist on direct to disc. My favorite used to be Amanda McBroom on West of Oz (Sheffeld Labs) With a bad match the voice will become edgy or break up, with a good match the voice will remain smooth in the most intense passages. This tests for two things, trackability and tone arm resonance. Note that the more complex stylus shapes require correct VTA adjustment for this test to be valid but elliptical and hyperelliptical shapes are fairly forgiving.

As to importance, the tonearm is secondary to the turntable. A spring suspension turntable like Linn or Sota with an entry level tonearm will reveal much more than if you buy a better arm but compromise on a non spring suspension turntable.
Lewm, i was in audio at the hey day of vinyl and my college education was physics. The assertion is fact based from comparison in the early 80's with reference systems in the $20K range, trying various TT solutions at the time, Rega, Denon, Sota and Linn Sondek. The basic reason why is this:

A vinyl recording is a physical transcription of the audio sound wave in a circle spiraling inwards. For absolute fidelity the stylus must trace the signal with no other superimposed vibration in the range of human hearing and with no sympathetic vibration from the tracing tonearm assembly. It is also a stereo ( or quad) signal so that difference in relative motion exists between left and right side of the stylus. These physically transcribed vibrations are the key to what we call imaging; the more exact they are followed, the better the tonal resolution (timbre) and the more we get a sense of instrument spatial location.

The problem with playing an LP is external vibration; you are vibrating right now in your seat (heartbeat, many other vibrations exist from motors, vehicles, building construction). Assuming that you have a top notch TT and tonearm so that it creates no vibration and does not vibrate sympathetically you have to filter and damp out these external vibrations from reaching your stylus playback or your stereo image collapses, low volume detail becomes vague, muddy.... basically the external vibration changes the electrical signal transduced from the stylus and it affects the oh so important low level transient detail.

Rigid, non suspended turntables like the Rega and Denon have mass damping chacteristics only so that even the best arm in the world can only bring so much into focus and less than perfect arms are small ships tossed around in a storm of vibration.

Turntables like the Linn and Sota when properly balanced have a suspension resonance point below the audible range of human hearing, vibration from the surface the TT rests on is damped by the suspension above the resonance point.
They are not perfect but they acchieve an order of magnitude greater success than turntables who don't use basic automotive physics for a soft stable ride. Because they dampout external vibrations so well before they affect stylus tracing, cheaper arms have a calmer environment to trace in and their deficiencies wont be seen without more extreme musical passages to excite the arm assembly resonance deficiencies.
I note also dialogue about whether to spend more money on tonearm or cartridge. note this metaphor... the arm is the chassis of the automobile, the cartridge is the engine. Its more fun to have a cheap chassis with a high powered engine than to have an expensive chassis with an underpowered engine. Cartridges have distinct sound characteristics, arms help refine and dig more detail out of the cartridge playback... they can't add what isn't there to begin with.
the basic yardstick for successful purchase is listening fatigue. In order of importance

1) turntable
2) tonearm
3) cartridge

however cartridges like speakers illicit love/hate/ho-hum responses. And unlike tonearms stylii can be destroyed in a blink of an eye. So find a cartridge manufacturer whose sound you love and settle on the model that won't cause divorce if your spouse dusts the stylus; invest any difference in your tonearm. (which may still cause divorce if your increased blissful listening hours makes your spouse feel like an "audiophile widow" :<)
paperw8, heres what I've seen with a Linn Sondek going from least to best tonearm available in the shop.

#1, quality of arm doesn't affect groove tracking, thats really a matter of good bearings and good match between arm mass and cartridge so that irregular record surfaces don't excite a wow/flutter effect. You can get excellent groove tracking in any properly made cartridge above $100

2# quality of arm does affect the ability to trace microtransients and not distort peak transients. A mediocre arm reduces that sense of "air" in a recording and direct to discs will make you want to shoot the arm and put it out of its misery. The arm basically rings like a bell at unpredictable frequencies and amplitudes in sympathy to the stylus vibration.

Better arms have fairly sophisticated schemes of minimizing resonances. Beware of any tonearm with dangling parts, thats a resonance PITA. An excellent tonearm should have a machined approach like jewel movement swiss watches.