Integrityhifi TRU-GLIDER Pendulum Tonearm

Only one Tru-Glider user? C'mon!

I am trying to figure out how some of the claims are justified.  "Weightless"?  "No pivot"?  The arm and headshell MUST have effective mass in order to work with cartridge compliance, and it is clear from visual inspection that they do.  Therefore it is not weightless. There definitely IS a pivot with its center at the attachment of the string; it's just a sloppy one.  That reminds me of at least the early WT tonearms, which also claimed no bearing, when in fact they had a pivot that was just not close tolerance.  And that headshell...  Does it really work without any friction? (If there is any friction in its lateral movement to maintain tangency, then there would be at least a small skating force.)  Anyway, all of that said, I have heard other oddball tonearms that cannot meet the claims of their makers yet sound great.  So I would never say without hearing this one that it cannot sound great.  Lord knows, no orthodox pivoted tonearm is perfect.

@lancelock 
Well that's the "problem" lancelock...you have actual experience with  the tonearm! I mean, how can you possibly judge its performance unless you have some sort of engineering experience with no need to hear it?
; -)

Several times I have wrestled with Mijostyn's statement: "A tonearm must be limited to 2 degrees of motion. It must be held rigidly in all others. I will never personally consider an arm that is designed otherwise." I think by this statement, M is meaning to indict unipivot tonearms in favor of gimbal bearing tonearms. But the principle is poorly stated. I gimbal bearing will fix motion at the pivot in two dimensions, up and down and side to side, but at the other end of the lever, those two dimensions are always additive and permit motion of the headshell /cartridge in all directions in the vertical plane, with respect to the center of rest, just as with a unipivot. Indeed that has to be the case, else gimbal bearing tonearms could not track a flawed LP that has a slight warp and is also slightly offcenter.

@lewm , there are 4 degrees of freedom  (movement); horizontal, vertical, axial and torsional. Theoretically a tonearm should only be able to move in two of them, horizontal and vertical. Movement in the other degrees will cause distortion of one type or another. Axial movement would cause something like wow and flutter. Torsional movement would certainly increase stylus and record wear and depending on it's resonance frequency, distortion at some level. Tonearms have to be as stiff as possible in the last two degrees to maintain proper geometry. It is bad enough that an arm operates in arcs, warp wow can be painfully obvious. Stick a dime under the edge of a test record and play a midrange tone. The change in pitch is obvious. An arm that has it's vertical bearing at record level will be a little less obvious. This is why Tri-Planar and Schroder designed their arms the way they are. The 4 Points are another example. Reed also does this with the 2G. I could own any of these arms. All of these arms are also neutral balance arms. Tracking force does not change with vertical motion. Most arms are static balance.
Anyway I chose the Schroder CB I guess because it is a favorite of many whose talents and opinions I respect and I like Frank's design mentality. His arms do everything an arm should do but they look so simple, elegant.

As for unipivots, they are a simple cheap way to build a tonearm. The two best unipivots, the Graham and Basis arms have been redesigned and have mechanisms to control torsional movement. Graham uses opposing magnets and Basis added a weird second bearing that stops torsion in one direction. The offset counter weight is then adjusted so bearing contact is maintained. It is really not a unipivot anymore. It is a bipivot. Adding lateral weights just lowers the resonance frequency. Good preloaded bearings are expensive and machining becomes critical as the bearings have to be aligned perfectly. It takes a very skilled person or a very fancy machine. Rega and Pro-Ject arms are a great value because those much bigger companies can afford the very fancy machine. I would take a Rega arm over a unipivot VPI arm any day. 

Can you imagine the arrogance of SME limiting their tonearm sales to their turntables! In order to get one of their arms you have to spend a fortune on one of their tables. They are great tables but let's face it, a great value they are not.