Philosophy: Bearing vs. Unipivot

?? I'd be interesting in seeing how that applies here.

I don't like unipivots because the bearing is so easy to damage. I've never seen an older one come through the shop that did not have a damaged bearing. It is the Achilles heel of unipivots.

Its not like gimballed arms are perfect. Damage to their bearings is a problem too. Some manufacturers solve it by leaving some slop in the bearings, which can cause coloration. Others like SME, use larger bearings that are harder to damage (and have more sticktion). Triplanar uses a small bearing that is ultra-hard, in fact the hardest made, which is why they have consistent performance year in and year out.

I also prefer gimballed arms because they hold the cartridge in better locus with respect to the groove itself.

I owned a Rabco for years. I set it up with an opamp to sense the feeler contacts to reduce noise (I got tired of the feelers not making good contact, which would result in the arm lifting off at random points on the LP...) At the same time I also integrated the output response so it would ramp up slowly and ramp down slowly.

The result is that the motor was always turning. This reduced the "error" (BTW Rabcos have **way** less error than radial tracking arms) by about 1.5 orders of magnitude- the arm would find the horizontal cutting speed of the LP and track with it. It was really easy to do.

Groove spacing is in fact what I mean when speaking of horizontal speed. Many records are in fact cut with a constant groove spacing but most are not. At any rate, the arm can be made to track the variable groove spacing with no worries.