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Tri-Planar Vll "SE Upgrade"

Contemplating  sending my Tri-Planar Vll back to Tri Mai for his "SE Upgrade". Essentially, same carbon fiber wand and internal silver wire and leads used in his 12" U12 arm. Anybody done the dirty deed?  If so, better, worse or pretty much the same. 

I've only seen one post on the subject and that person seemed more than happy.

Thanks to anyone who responds with personal experience.  No conjecture please. 
128x128rfogel8
testpilot
895 posts
 
@nadric, just to be clear, I had absolutely NOTHING to do with getting your posts removed. 
thom_at_galibier_design's avatar
thom_at_galibier_design
723 posts
 

brf wrote:

To my ears, my Tri-Planar does not mistrack when playing music albums

I don’t care if my Tri-Planar can track 50 microns on a test record

I have no interest in the Higgs particle

I do not like looking up Latin phrases when simple English will suffice

I am interested in learning more about Tri-Planar SE Upgrade

Back to our regularly scheduled programming ...

Ag insider logo xs@2x
ivanj
35 posts
 
Nandric,

"I even use the anti-skate test in order to get some impression about
the ''inside force'' . One can't get those 80 or 90 microns values
without increaising of the anti-skate force . The right channel
start with distortion first and need compensation with anti-skate.
The German expression is ''Mu'' which means the same as micron."

I've had (several) cartridges that need different anti-skating settings in different arms. I don't think that is a sign of a defective arm. Tuning anti-skate is a necessary condition for set up - although I know there are those that don't advocate it. I've also had cartridges that needed an anti-skate force that was less of more than the recommendation. I don't worry.

One can also adjust the damping in the Tri-P. What is the recommended order of setting this in the Tri-P arm? I find this a big advantage with some cartridges like the cantilever-less Ikeda. What is your experience? Since I regretfully sold my FR-64(s) what are do you recommend with those wonderful cartridge?

Search for Vinyl Aysulm for more specs on the arms - their significant parameters should be listed there.

I would call the manufacturer.  They seem very approachable.
nandric's avatar
nandric
4,086 posts
 

Hi ivanj, I left this forum because of censorship. Four of my posts

in this thread are removed without any explantion. I am not aware

that I ever insulted any member. I try to use arguments instead of

ascriping attributes to persons. As I mentioned before the ''things''

that can be true or false are statements and not persons. It make no

sense to say that a person is true or false. You can see in this thread

that I am questioned as person and not my statements. This explains

my metaphor about strawman. The other is ''shooting at messenger''.

This was a prerogative of kings but at present any novice feels

entitled to shoot at persons who say something that they not like.

You obviously own some test records so you should know how

easy is to refute my statement about tracking ability of Triplanar.

My statement was made about my own Triplanar  . This statement

does in no way imply enything about other Triplanars. But nobody

in this thread even try to refute my statment by repetition of the

same experiment. Instead they questioned my integrity , even

questioned if I own any Triplanar, then questioned my capability to

adjust whatever tonearm ,etc., etc. Well I am in this hobby for more

than 40 years and member of this forum since 2007.

The anti-skate is very difficult problem for pivoted tonearms. The

problem is the different force by different record radius as well

the different stylus shapes. Curiously this tracking ability test which

nobody seems to need or use can illuminate the working of anti-

skate. The arm/cart combo start to mistrack by certain microns

values. It start by the right channel. If,say, the right channel start

to ''buzz'' by 60 microns by increasing the anti-skate force this

can be corrected such that 60 microns will  sound ''pure''.

Now regarding Ikedas carts. My champion is FR-7fz. Next to the

fz is the Ikeda 9 the cantileverless kind. I don't believe that this

cart does not need anti-skate but this cart can't track more then

50 microns on any record. So this cart is very critical in regard to

records condition. But its dynamics can only be compared with

Deccas.

atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,574 posts
 
Folks, just so you know, 50 microns is about the same as 2 mils (which is how groove deflection is measured in the US if you have American-made LP mastering gear). Many systems use microns these days as many cutter systems are European-made.

2 mils (ever so slightly over 50microns, which is ~1.97 mils) is standard level for 0VU at 1KHz on our lathe and cutter system (Scully lathe with Westerx 3D cutter head, Westerex 1700 mastering electronics with custom tube amplifiers for the cutter head). **3db more is 4 mils.** This is because 3 db more requires double the amplifier power to cut the groove. That would work out to 100 microns.

Its really obvious why no-one other than Nandric has reported any tracking issues in this regard. Its because any arm made can track 2 mils (The older Technics 1200 machine we often use to test our cuts has no troubles doing it; we use this machine with an inexpensive cartridge to make sure that a groove we cut can be played by a common turntable).  His magical number of 70 microns is about 1.43 db over 0VU on our system. That's not a hard value for most arms (including the humble Technics) to do as well. 

The Triplanar has no worries doing this- we've brought lathe cuts back to the shop and played them on our system no worries. The big danger in cutting louder tracks is usually overcutting the groove, not the tracking of the playback at this level, so long as you don't have the usual dangers such as out-of-phase bass or the like (out-of-phase bass can knock the stylus out of the groove).  Since the groove noise tends to show up in the pressing process and even then is not a great concern if the mastering engineer did his job right, there really is very little call for going over 0VU when making the cut.

So even though 70 microns is a very slight increase in volume, its also a really rare thing to encounter (the exception being 12" singles on 45rpm and the like). This is because going over 0VU means that the engineer is likely going to have to take some time to set up the groove cut so no playback problems are encountered. For the most part, mastering houses like to avoid that sort of thing because the typical cost of mastering is about $400/hour.  So a mastering operation will take pains to avoid higher levels like that, even though most arms can play it no worries.

So the conclusion is one or more of the following:
1) the Triplanar to which Nandric refers was/is damaged
2) he does not know how to set up an arm
3) the story is made up.

IOW, the math just does not support his apparently ridiculous story.
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