Thales Simplicity tonearm review in Stereophile.

After more investigating on the hifistatement.net website, it looks like they are using a Brinkmann LaGrange TT for their tests.

Whoops. Meant to type exception, not except. I could not edit my own post for some reason. Even though no one had posted to it yet.

For those who have not read the article here are the issues that Fremer brought up about the arm. The best I could do in my own words anyway.

First, the setup jig and instructions were confusing for him and he broke the first cartridge he tried to install.

Second, the jig as far I can tell is very imprecise. It had you aligning the cartridge without putting a load on the cantilever, and the lines were very thick and obscured the stylus. Hard to explain without the picture in the article. Even with the picture it is hard to completely understand how it works. He said "The alignment I achieved was, at best, a guesstimate".

Third, he found the bearings to have too much friction. After measuring the arm's antiskating deflection using his Wally Tools Skater (whatever that is?) , which suspends the tonearm by a thread, it revealed a serious problem. The Simplicity got stuck in whatever position he placed it in. He stated that a truly free bearing system would allow an arm to move freely.

Fourth, the Simplicity still has the issue of skating forces like normal pivoting arms because the headshell is offset. The offset changes as the arm moves across the record from 19 degrees at the outer groove to 7 degrees at the inner groove. The Simplicity uses a magnetic antiskate device. There are magnets between the counter weights that change the antiskate force as the arm moves towards the inner grooves. This is set at the factory and is not adjustable. As skating forces will change with different groove velocity, it would be nice to be able to adjust it for each record (this was my conclusion not Fremer's).

At the end he concluded that with it's high friction bearings and it's bright sonic signature, it was not worth the cost to achieve near tangential tracking.

Lewm, I hope you are correct about the Schroder LT, as I will have one soon. I was interested in the Thales arms in the past until I found out they will not fit on my TT. Even so the subject of tonearms interests me. Especially linear tracking arms, because they are even more of an engineering challenge.

Here is a foreign review that is easy to read. http://www.audiotechnique.com/reference/thales/355_thales_tonarm_eng.pdf

It has some better pictures. I have to say I agree with MF about the setup jig not being ideal.

Thanks Hiho, for posting those links. I preferred sample 43 to sample 44 myself. Slightly more transparent.

Yeah, the alignment would be way off. On the other hand, if you could make up for that, by changing the P2S distance on a table with a pivoting arm board. Having the headshell backward would allow you to get to the cartridge screws, and you would be able to adjust alignment like a normal arm. Instead of using that funky alignment jig it comes with. Unless having the headshell plate backwards would throw it's geometry off. Which it probably would.