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Spiral Groove Centroid tonearm


Anyone has any experience with this new design? It has a rather brief rave review along with the Spiral Groove turntable in the latest Stereophile. It seems like an exciting analog product in recent years, along with Thales arms. Allen Perkins is a respected designer and I am intrigued by his tonearm design and wants to learn more about it.

From what I read, it's a unipivot design with a unique counterweight and bearing housing that concentrate most of the mass at the center pivot point, hence the name Centroid. I am also curious about how it deals with azimuth rocking in a unipivot design. Does it have a secondary ball bearing to stabilize torsional behavior like the Graham Phantom, Basis Vector, and Continuum Coppperhead, or the slightly different Nottingham and Simon Yorke? Or is it a pure unipivot with a spike and dimple? In unipivot designs, it is how the designer handles the azimuth rocking that truly shows the creativity. I'm surprised this tonearm has garnered much talk among the forum lurkers. If you know more about it, please contribute and discuss. Thanks!

Some pictures.
hiho

Showing 2 responses by mosin

mosin
410 posts
 
Hi,

The tonearm employs the same principle as the old Magnepan Unitrac tonearm, but with modern refinements. The idea of central mass in a unipivot design isn't a new one, but it is a very solid concept.

Here's a bit more on the subject...
http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/m.mpl?forum=vinyl&n=473487
mosin
410 posts
 
Of course, I consider your Olympos cartridge to be among the finest in the world. That said, in a sense, isn't the alignment similar in ways to the tried and true alignment jig of times gone past? In the case of the Spiral Groove, precision is a given, and Allen's enviable six in-house CNC machines bring the concept to a new level. Still, what interests me most is the inertia concept of the tonearm. I belive, like Jim Winey, that inertia is the singular make or break component of any tonearm.

Regards,
Win
Saskia Turntables
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