Integrityhifi TRU-GLIDER Pendulum Tonearm

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. 

@lewm  There are many excellent arms that do not have gimbal bearings but are excellent none the less. Example are the 4 Points, the Reed 2G
Origin Live, Rega and the Schroder CB and only g-d and Frank Schroder know what is in there.

I have one on my vpi hw40 and love it. I did have some difficulty on initial set up but that was me not the arm. Once set up it works flawless. It takes some getting used to as far as cueing the lead in groove. The first track I played was Johnny Cash Spiritual off the Unchained record. The hair on my arm literally stood up. It tracks both sides of the groove perfectly. I never use the BOO arm that came on the table. Wish I could take it off. 
As far as not fitting any table that is totally false. Watch their videos. They show all kinds of different rigs. 
Give them a call if you have questions. Tina and Carlo are the nicest people.

@Lewm, It is hard to do a true gimbal pivot and keep the vertical bearing at record level. You have to resort to something like what Tri-Planar did.
The SAT arm is a very fat gimbal pivoted arm with a very high vertical bearing. The price is also ridiculous. I wouldn't get it even if I had the money. The Tri-Planar is a better design.

Oh, but you have to listen to it. Right, it is virtually impossible to listen to any arm in your own system without buying it. What other people say it sounds like is close to worthless. The Transcriptors Vestigial Arm taught me that lesson. You have to buy an arm based on it's design and quality of manufacture. So, you have to set parameters for what a good design is. An arm should be very stiff but as light as possible. It should have one wire from from each cartridge pin to the phono stage RCA's or XLR's. The vertical bearing should be at record level and the geometry such that the arm is of neutral balance. It's bearing should lock motion in the axial and torsional directions, and it must have a low friction anti skate mechanism. An opposing magnet system like Reed and Schroder use is ideal.  I have learned to stay away from longer arms. They have higher moments of inertia and can not be made as stiff as a shorter arm without adding even more mass. The improvement in tracking error is not even close to being worth the added mass. I am all for tangential tracking. IMHO the biggest benefits are, no skating and a lower moment of inertia. The two that are ideal are the Reed 5T and the Schroder LT. Unfortunately, neither will fit on my turntable. The Reed is also very pricey. There is a German carriage driven arm (can't remember the name) that on paper looks great.
You know how I feel about air bearing arms.