New Schroeder linear tonearm, any thoughts?

If there's any trickle-down technology I'd like to see happen fast, it's THIS! If Shroder were willing to license the design, it could be mass-produced, making the arm affordable to a wide range of customers. I'd love to see this become the new RB300!

This is such an elegantly simple design that could be fitted to a wide range of turntables. I wonder how long the arm has to be for this dual-pivot to maintain tangential tracking?

I'd love to see this show up on Pro-Ject, Music Hall, Rega, VPI ...

Lewm: I wouldn't expect an automated manufacturing version of this arm to come in at $300, but Panasonic/Technics made *millions* of SL12x0 tonearms while maintaining a mere 7.5mg bearing friction. This was based on a 30+ year-old design and implementation. The Shroeder bearings demand half that level of resistance, and I think it could be as easily accomplished today as 7.5mg was in 1981. Japanese industry has a long track record of high precision mass production. I think it could bring the price from $9K down to $1000-1500.

A $30K automobile, if made individually, would cost at least a million dollars. The quantities for a specialty tonearm wouldn't be nearly as high, but if the pivot were manufactured under tight control and licensed to many tonearm implementers, I think they could reach significant economy of scale, especially if it became the new pivot standard for Pro-Ject, Rega, and VPI. Maybe it would be enticing enough to get Denon or similar back into the quality TT business.

If this works as expected, it should be a game-changer--a tangential tracker that for the most part behaves like a standard pivoting tonearm in all the good ways.

07-31-13: Stringreen
...but is it worth it. Would the less than bat eared audiophile be able to hear the difference between the very slight error of today's arms compared to this arm. Can you reading these posts distinguish between a 9 and 10 inch version of the same arm?

I absolutely heard the difference between a conventional pivoting arm and a tangential tracker. At my local high end dealer's annual open house, Mike Fremer showed up with a CD he'd made, re-recording the same LP track multiple times with different turntable/tonearm combinations. One of them had a tangential tracker (probably a Walker). All tracks were level-matched for listening tests.

I identified the track made with the tangential arm easily. It doesn't take "bat ears" any more than Sherlock Holmes needed "eagle eyes." You just have to know what to listen (or look) for, especially to be sensitive to certain musical values. The problem with much critical listening is that people are listening for sound (higher highs, lower lows, louder louds and softer softs) when they need to be listening for musical values--tonal accuracy, timing, rhythm and pace, soundstage, transients, ambience, and just flat-out musical enjoyment. The recordings from the pivoting tonearms sounded pinched or constipated compared to the tangential tracker.

The tangential tracker was more relaxed and open, and sounded more live and less like reproduced music. But the good tangential trackers are expensive and a big PITA for the support mechanism, especially the air pump. It was frustrating to realize I could easily hear it but not afford it.

The Shroeder takes care of the hassle part, but is about as expensive as a perpendicular arm. Compared to the air bearing tonearms, the Shroeder pivot should be relatively easy to reproduce and even mass produce, bringing this higher level of sonic refinement to a larger audience.

08-03-13: Stringreen
John.... Maybe you DO have bat ears, Sherlock is fiction, too many variables in the Fremer test, maybe the (probably) Walker had a more open sound due to less resonance et al that pleased you..... I stand by my question.

Sherlock is fiction, but his character is based on a professor whom Conan Doyle had in med school, a guy who practiced an acute level of observation. There are mentalists (such as depicted in the CBS TV series) who have sharpened their powers of observation to see things others don't. It's based on technique, not on vision acuity.

While it's true that the Fremer test has a casual relationship to the scientific method, his #1 turntable is the $100K Continuum Cliburn Reference Turntable with the pivoting Cobra tonearm. If anything, the supporting mechanism and vibration control should have favored at least one of the pivoting tonearms. Yet even with all that in its favor, I noticed a more linear and natural quality of the playback coming off the tangential arm. And I don't think Fremer was pushing the virtues of tangential tracking. After all, his reference table has a pivoting arm, and when I pointed out my preference for the tangential arm he pointed out what a hassle they are to own, operate, and set up.

I've done a lot of noise and vibration tweaking over the last several years and have grown familiar with the effects of lowering the noise floor. What I heard with the tangential tracker was an entirely different quality, and one that doesn't lend itself to easy description with standard audiophile jargon. But I heard the difference.

So I stand by my response. I may have slightly better than average hearing (but only just); the thing I've concentrated on is how the brain responds to what it hears. I know for a fact from a hearing test that I have a -6dB dip in hearing response, centering at 6 Khz, in my right ear. I have trouble interpreting speech when I can only listen with my right ear. Talking on a phone held up to my right ear is out of the question.

08-04-13: Stringreen
Hi John... here's another test for yourself... can you tell which is the VPI Traveler, and which is the Caliburn. Go to Analogue Planet, and download the flac files that Fremer supplies comparing 10 turntables/cartridges.

I think this is turning into an obsession for you.

Bifwynne: Nope, I never did target shooting growing up. There was one instance when I was 18 and fired a 12 ga. shotgun just once. It's the only time I ever fired a gun. I can't remember if I wore ear protectors or not. My ear didn't ring or feel funny after I shot it.

But if there was an instance that compromised my right ear, it was probably when I was 7, at a noisy children's convention and the kid next to me cupped his hands around my ear and talked directly into it in a loud voice. I could feel my eardrum shudder at the excess SPL.

It could also be the narrow diameter of my ear canals. I can't wear any sort of in-canal earbuds, not even the expensive ones that come with varying diameter pads. And it's obvious when I try them that the right canal is narrower.