Eminent Technology ET-2 Tonearm Owners

OK, a little off topic but I must give a shout out to the U.S. Van den Hul rep.  Disclaimer first.  I have no affiliation with A.J. Van den Hul or his U.S. rep., Finest Fidelity. 

 As those of you who follow my ramblings know, a while back I purchased a VDH Black Beauty special X.  Well, in one of my OC tweaking moods I over torqued the bolts holding the cartridge to my ET arm wand and cracked the upper plate on the cartridge.  I contacted Randy at Finest Fidelity who is the rather new U.S. VDH distributor. 

This is a cartridge I purchased "as new" on U.S. Audio Mart from a gentleman in Washington who, for reasons I won't bore you with, I trusted implicitly.  Randy could have said, sorry, I can't help because you bought it second hand and not from a VDH dealer.  He didn't. Instead, he immediately (same day) contacted A.J. and said, yes it could be repaired; send it on to him.  

Well, to make a short story long, a month later my Black Beauty was returned to me, I set it up and the right channel had a terrible hum. I again contacted Randy who said send it back.  I did so and it made another round trip to the Netherlands (this time free of charge) and , today,  I received it back.  It is just as glorious as it was the first time around.  

Incredible customer service like this is hard to find from a dealer, much less a distributor.

If you need help with your VDH product, I highly recommend Finest Fidelity.

P.S. This cartridge just loves the ET with original aluminum arm wand.

I was wondering how a rewire through the spindle is accomplished with the connecting plug machined into the spindle, How does one access the pins inside the spindle?
-Brad 

Hi Brad - you need to be very careful working with and around the machined plug on a stock ET2 tonearm.

You would be like we are fond of saying here....... "Poking at the Sleeping Bear"

I provide this info from Bruce.... also for anyone that has any ideas of removing and -reinstalling the machined plug

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If someone removes the 5 pin plug and runs wire straight through the spindle the air bearing will usually work fine. We made a special tool to remove the plugs, you might get lucky with a long screwdriver and you might bend pins on the opposite side of the plug in the attempt.

We do not sanction field removal and re-installation of the 5 pin plug. The spindle is an aluminum tube with very flexible walls, keep in mind that the spindle needs to remain concentric to work as an air bearing. Adhesives typically expand slightly while curing, if the plug is not machined concentric to the spindle during the cure, the air bearing will not perform well where it is needed most (at that end of travel) and a bad air bearing reflects poorly on us.

I hope this helps - brucet

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fwiw

When I had Bruce build my 19 PSI, 2.5 I specified no machined plug as I had my own one shot wiring. As you know, the first upgrade many people do with their ET2 is wire one shot - from the armtube direct into the phono stage direct, bypassing the air bearing spindle, and the extra connections. Even Bruce runs this way into - what was an SP11mkII the last time I conversed with him on it. Running through the spindle was, I assume, a business decision, based on the turntables that were been equipped with an ET2 at the time it came out.... in the Early Years. Same year the perfect sound (CD) was introduced 8^0

Hi Brad - you need to be very careful working with and around the machined plug on a stock ET2 tonearm. 

You would be like we are fond of saying here....... "Poking at the Sleeping Bear" 

Thanks for that information.
This arm is pretty new to me and in stock form far superior to anything that I've owned before. I'm trying to decide if or what I might to do to improve it's performance. 
I did email Bruce about converting it to a high pressure manifold, that might be a possibility. Cost is a concern, so is not having a table for an extend time.
-Brad  

^^^^^^^
Brad,
in hindsight and fwiw. Consider this.

My first ET2 years ago was a stock one. Over time, once I had it working well, I finally opened up the "Book Of Bruce" ...BOB ....and read it through... instead of giving it a cursory look over in sections, the first few times. I then refined my setup again.

That stock ET2 outperformed..... Trumped .......
Dynavector, FR64s, VPI 12 and Micro Seiki tonearms that I had.
That’s in stock mode.

So my advice based on my experiences, is to have patience with what you have and build experience with it. Now definitely get a couple Long I Beams from Bruce (Single and Double Springs). The Long I Beam is inexpensive in terms of cost, but huge in terms of performance; and is how it was meant to be, if not for business constraints .... those dreaded dustcovers.

Then .....if one is still in Audiophile mode after this, consider the options which include.

Direct Shot wiring - very easy setup on an ET2. Just bypass existing wiring.

The Aluminum mounting base

Aluminum Gooseneck (Joint).

Carbon Fiber Armtube. works with MM and MC carts.

Magnesium (Mag) armtube. Lower compliance MC carts.

High Pressure Manifold.

Conversion to 2.5 (if Bruce still does this - not sure)
You didn’t say if yours was a 2.0 or 2.5. If you use mostly MC carts, the 2.5 is preferred, larger spindle is lower in resonance to deal better with MC carts as discussed here. If you use MM carts I would stick with the 2.0.

My 2 cents

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So when is Spring coming guys ? I heard the Yankees and Mets baseball games were snowed out this week ?