Why is the price of new tonearms so high

Hi Axel,
Stimmt. I can imagine your system sounds very good. Have you ever tried a Koetsu cartridge? It depends on the music you like. It can be an artist's price, only you will forget about the cost once you hear the music.
MfG,

It is all about marketing. Brand name has value because it is a reputation built over years. But these days, the wall street types push that "value" to the limit. Every generation of brand name product released comes with a 25% increase in price. Manufacturing costs continue to decrease as more products are outsourced to China. So profits have to be at an all time high. Gives new meaning to High End.
I see the resell prices of used products showing the real value of a product. A lot of high end products take substantial equity hits on the used markets.

We are all such engineers. Take a Picasso, for example- how do you put a value on one of his paintings? If someone is willing to pay $3 million for it, do you say that's stupid because it just $49 worth of paint and canvas and about 150 man-hours of labor?
This is the "value" high end companies are in business for- it is more than just tubing, bearings and wire. It is a type of art and engineering that is priced at a point people are willing to pay.
Someone looks at a tonearm and says that is just $xx worth of metal, plastic and wires, no way! Someone else appreciates the quality of music it can create and plunks down the money. To each his own.

Dampening material coverts the mechanical vibrations into heat. Very effective on just about everything. You wouldn't be able to stand riding in your car without it.
But don't expect to improve your system by putting dampening material everywhere. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Just like too much dampening of your listening room can make your stereo sound lifeless and dull.

Effective mass is not the same thing as the mass of the tonearm. It seems people are confusing these two terms. My SAE tonearm, for example has an effective mass at the headshell of 9.5g- according to my owners manual. The entire tonearm and counterweight certainly weighs more than 9.5g. The tonearm manufacturer has simplified a more complicated inertia calculation into an easy to apply value- effective mass. Now, I can add the mass of my cartridge to the effective mass of my tonearm and then apply the compliance of my cartridge to find the Resonance Frequency, Fn of my Tonearm/Cartridge system using: Fn=sqrt(k/m) where K=compliance (N/m) and m=mass (kg). Ideal Fn is around 10Hz. I recently lived this issue when I mounted my new Denon cartridge to my SME tonearm. The SME is a relatively low mass tonearm. The Denon cartridge has a mass of 8.5g and a compliance of 7.5X10-3N/m. This put my system Fn at about 16 Hz. (Insufficient mass) This was too high. I was fine until I tried to play a record that had a slight wave to it. The tonearm would dance across the record. I could see the cantilever move upward and kick the tonearm into the air. Searching AudiogoN, I found a place in England that sells a 4g mass (Aluminum) with threaded holes specifically made for the Denon cartridge. The added 4g mass lowers my Fn to just over 10Hz. I applied the mass to my cartridge and now it plays that same record perfectly. I also knew the added mass would work because my now dead Koetsu cartridge had a mass of 14g. I also found this 4g Al plate improved the sound of the Denon. The bass is better and imaging more focused. Not bad for a $19 tweak w/shipping. I have always had heavier (14g range) cartridges in the past and so never encountered this issue before. I could see how these kinds of problems could be frustrating to someone not trained in Engineering.