Linear Tracking or Not?, Any Experiences and Recs

My friend has been using an Air Tangent for about ten years.There has been no problems,whatsoever.He does not have a table with a vacuum system,yet the sound is absolutely stunning.Clearly a cut above any pivot I've ever heard.I'm intimately familiar with his set-up,and can attest to the fact that,though a linear arm needs some extra attention,there is NOTHING that has the ebb and flow of music,like an arm,of this type.I only wish I had the time to deal with the issues involved in it's care and feeding!

Best regards!

I 've been using a tweeked Maplenoll Ariadne signature for about 13 years with great results. I won't throw my hat in the ring with comparisons since I haven't done any controled test since th Maplenoll is an integrated unit. I will however throw in a little tweek that has worked very well for me in liu of an outer platter ring.

I made two little brass wire brackets kinda like an L shape with just a bit of a point extending out from the top to barely catch the record edge, the bottom leg going under the latter at a slight upward angle, and the vertical length sprung slightly and just over the height of the platter. With these I could clamp the record edge to the platter in two places if needs be. Definitely fiddley but cheap and effective. Email me at [email protected] if you want to see pictures. Should work on most tables.

Dgad, Your comment on a vacuum table as being necessary for optimun performance of a tangent tracker is of interest to me , as I have just purchased the Kuzma Air Line and do not intend to use it on a commercially manufactured table.
Would you please expound on your opinion. thanks, Ken - kftool

I started using a Kuzma Airline a few months ago and despite the horror stories about these kinds of arms, I have been enormously pleased. Once set up and properly aligned, it is non-fiddly (I did initial set up pretty easily on the Kuzma XL table, but it was fine-tuned by Bill Parrish at GTT, who knows the arm and brought it to a fine point). Setting VTA is brilliantly simple and repeatable.
As to bass, and overall performance, I can give you the following insight- I had bought a Kuzma Reference table and the latest Triplanar, using a Lyra Titan i. The rest of the system was essentially unchanged. Pretty impressive bass (I use Avantgarde Duos, to put this into context) and quiet, dynamic and musical performance. I then switched to the Kuzma XL table- very high mass- and the Airline. More air around and body to the instruments- the bass became far deeper, if a little less pronounced higher up in the spectrum, and the sense of palpability- of real instruments and voices in space- not just a mirage or hologram, but real, with tonality and substance that wasn't there in the more modest set-up. (I grant you, some of this may have to do with the TT upgrade. And with the use of a far better platform for the TT. But, initial comparisons were without the benefit of the finite elemente platform now being used).
There is also less of a sense of a record playing- hard to describe, but when you don't hear it, you realize what you are usually hearing from a phono source.
The compressor must be in another place other than the listening room- it is noisy, it spits and farts, and is an otherwise serious piece of industrial gear. The quality of the arm itself is immediately apparent visually- overbuilt, fairly simple, and so far flawless in performance. I had an ET2 back in the day, and while it is unfair to compare, given the difference in price points-the ET2 was a bargain-
the Airline is an absolute revelation.
As to the need for a vaccuum table, maybe I am not getting the last iota from the XL, but I find that hard to believe- the record clamp does a great job, and the mass of the TT/platter assembly makes for a dead quiet listening experience. But, I'm certainly willing to be educated on this as well.

Whart,

You have me curiuos. I would love for you to compare the Airline to a Triplanar and to a Schroder. this would be the cats meow. Now, from what I undertand the XL table is a perfect match for the airline & gives you world class sound. I strongly believe in some tables possesing table arm synergy. Maybe some Audiogoners can fill in here. I do know that there is a lot of talk about cartridge & arm synergy. What about table and arm. To name a few simple examples, Basis w. Graham or w. Basis arm, VPI w. its own arm, the Kuzma combination, and TW Acustic w. Schroder or Davinci. There are more but I feel that some such as Walker or Rockport would lose thier magic w. an arm other than a linear tracking arm. I wonder if Mike Lavigne was ever able to compare a different arm on his Rockport (doubtful as it seems difficult to setup). Has Raul ever used a linear tracking arm? There is a lot to learn, but once again I turn back to system synergy as the key to having a world class system.