Mijostyn, I think you are a nice guy, and I enjoy sparring with you, but what does rankle me is your consistent tendency to draw scientific-ish relationships between or among disparate factoids that are very often not at all related as cause-effect or at least there is no proof of a cause-effect relationship except circumstances. Further, you nearly always fail to label your dissertations as "opinion". You’re certainly not the only one who does this, but you write with such certainty that it might actually perpetuate some of your erroneous beliefs among newbies. Putting aside our complete disagreement when it comes to suspended, belt-drive turntables (I generally don’t like them except for the Dohmann) vs unsuspended direct-drive turntables (I like some of the best ones), your polemic on tonearms above is full of holes. The only thing you say with which I would have to agree is that use of a removable headshell does inevitably require an extra set of physical contacts in the signal path. I was just as taken in by this teaching against removable headshells, that was foisted upon us audiophiles back in the 90s, that I avoided using tonearms with removable headshells for about 20 years, until 5-6 years ago.
You wrote, "Removable head shells are a terrible thing to strap a tonearm and cartridge with. Not only do they add unnecessary contacts but they add mass right where you do not want it forcing you add more mass at the other end of the arm increasing the arm’s moment of inertia ruining it’s ability to follow record undulations." What "mass" are you talking about? The mass of the connector, which cannot add more than a gram or two to effective mass? Even tonearms with fixed headshells must have a headshell of some sort, which always adds to effective mass per se. Actually, separatable headshells make a tonearm more adaptable to cartridges with various levels of compliance. For one example, the FR64S is a tonearm with high effective mass, especially when you use the FR headshell that comes with it. There are a few different ones made by FR, but they are all pretty heavy, weighing 20g and more (and many say they sound bad, but I wouldn’t know). But one can choose to use a much lighter headshell, such as any good carbon fiber type that weigh about 10g typically, or any of the light aluminum headshells made over the years by SME, AT, Denon and others that weigh much less than 10g. So for the putative disadvantage of those extra physical contacts, one gains tremendous flexibility. Now, can you adapt an FR64S, in terms of achieving an acceptable calculated resonant frequency, to some of the MM cartridges from the early days with VERY high compliance, e.g. an ADC XLM? Probably not. But you can adapt an FR64S to nearly any modern medium compliance LOMC, if resonant frequency is your holy grail. Whether or not you can "hear" those headshell contacts in the signal path is a question I would leave to each end user to decide. I advise a touch of a good contact enhancer.
You also wrote, "They are static balance arm thus the VTF changes with elevation and the bearings are high above the record surface increasing warp wow." Wrong and wrong. I think the FR64fx is built just like an FR64S, only with lighter materials, but for sure the FR64S is a dynamic balance tonearm, not a static balance type. Moreover, the FR64S has a decoupled counterweight that hangs down into the plane of the LP surface, not "high above" it. It is a very modern design in that regard. I remember Herb Papier telling me he thought it was a big improvement, when he decided to re-engineer the Triplanar so to decouple the CW. Some guys don’t like the dynamic balance method for adjusting VTF; I just recently read that at least one FR64S aficionado ignores the dynamic balance feature and prefers static balance. Still others prefer dialing in some of the VTF by dynamic and the remainder by moving the CW. Using dynamic balance does permit one to get the CW as close as possible to the pivot, thereby minimizing its effect on net effective mass.
Let’s just keep our facts straight.
You wrote, "Removable head shells are a terrible thing to strap a tonearm and cartridge with. Not only do they add unnecessary contacts but they add mass right where you do not want it forcing you add more mass at the other end of the arm increasing the arm’s moment of inertia ruining it’s ability to follow record undulations." What "mass" are you talking about? The mass of the connector, which cannot add more than a gram or two to effective mass? Even tonearms with fixed headshells must have a headshell of some sort, which always adds to effective mass per se. Actually, separatable headshells make a tonearm more adaptable to cartridges with various levels of compliance. For one example, the FR64S is a tonearm with high effective mass, especially when you use the FR headshell that comes with it. There are a few different ones made by FR, but they are all pretty heavy, weighing 20g and more (and many say they sound bad, but I wouldn’t know). But one can choose to use a much lighter headshell, such as any good carbon fiber type that weigh about 10g typically, or any of the light aluminum headshells made over the years by SME, AT, Denon and others that weigh much less than 10g. So for the putative disadvantage of those extra physical contacts, one gains tremendous flexibility. Now, can you adapt an FR64S, in terms of achieving an acceptable calculated resonant frequency, to some of the MM cartridges from the early days with VERY high compliance, e.g. an ADC XLM? Probably not. But you can adapt an FR64S to nearly any modern medium compliance LOMC, if resonant frequency is your holy grail. Whether or not you can "hear" those headshell contacts in the signal path is a question I would leave to each end user to decide. I advise a touch of a good contact enhancer.
You also wrote, "They are static balance arm thus the VTF changes with elevation and the bearings are high above the record surface increasing warp wow." Wrong and wrong. I think the FR64fx is built just like an FR64S, only with lighter materials, but for sure the FR64S is a dynamic balance tonearm, not a static balance type. Moreover, the FR64S has a decoupled counterweight that hangs down into the plane of the LP surface, not "high above" it. It is a very modern design in that regard. I remember Herb Papier telling me he thought it was a big improvement, when he decided to re-engineer the Triplanar so to decouple the CW. Some guys don’t like the dynamic balance method for adjusting VTF; I just recently read that at least one FR64S aficionado ignores the dynamic balance feature and prefers static balance. Still others prefer dialing in some of the VTF by dynamic and the remainder by moving the CW. Using dynamic balance does permit one to get the CW as close as possible to the pivot, thereby minimizing its effect on net effective mass.
Let’s just keep our facts straight.