Micro Seiki MA-505 variants - any oracles around?

Indeed, I'm sceptical too.  Fortunately I don't particularly care and in any case I'm unlikely to ever find out unless the arm turns out to be defective and needs to be disassembled.

Mine will by necessity be mounted on a Spacedeck, but presumably it will perform well there too.

How do you like the performance of the arm? What Cartridge are you using?

@br3098

MA-505 Mk III - 9" straight tonearm w/ copper wiring. It was designed to mate with very low compliance cartridges which were all the rage in the 1980s

CORRECTION: It’s the other way around. This is the arm with 7g effective mass and tracking force from 0.25 - 3g. I believe it was designed for HIGH compliance cartridges in the 80s (not low compliance), but tonearm can support a cartridge even with 4-16g selfweight.

P.S. Another interesting arm made by Micro Seiki for Luxman is TA-1 for high compliance cartridges. Static balance system. Cartridge weight range 2 - 16g, tracking force range 0 - 3g, effective length 240mm. Antiskating adjustment, cuering system, arm-base stabilizer. Made in the 70’s by Micro-Seiki for Luxman Corporation (Osaka, Japan).

chakster, you are correct of course.  My bad.  I meant to say that the MkIII tonearm was designed for HIGH-compliance cartridges.

Thanks for the catch.

BTW the arm on Pioneer Exclussive P3 and related top of the line Pioneer turntables was also designed by Micro Seiki and has some similarity with Micro Seiki MAX-282