Tonearm Reviews

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Tonearm Reviews
Kuzma 4Point tonearm
Michael Fremer  |  Sep 09, 2011  |  5 comments
No one has ever accused Franc Kuzma of designing glamorous audio jewelry. His turntables and tonearms are industrial-strength examples of engineering know-how and machining excellence. But to those who appreciate such things, his products are truly beautiful, even if they're not adorned with chrome, wood, and sleekly polished surfaces. And if looking at the 4Point tonearm ($6500) in pebbly Darth Vader black doesn't get your analog juices flowing, perhaps its innovative design will. But first, this message:
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Tonearm Reviews
Brinkmann 9.6 tonearm
Michael Fremer  |  May 24, 2011  |  0 comments
Brinkmann's 9.6 tonearm ($3990) resembles the German company's longer, more expensive 10.5 and 12.1 arms, which in turn resemble the legendary Breuer. The new arm includes the same headshell, armtube, mounting socket, and cueing device used in the other arms. The bearing system differs, though the Swiss-made ball bearings are identical.

While the more expensive arms use traditional fixed-gimbal bearings, the 9.6 has a unipivot-like construction for the horizontal bearing. The weighted arm housing sits on a small ball that rests on a pivot, also as in a typical unipivot design. A second ball at the bottom of the housing prevents "arm lean," but since the arm's weight rests on the top ball, the lower one isn't critical, and I could feel some play when I handled the arm. Vertical arm motion is effected via a second pair of captured bearings. This arrangement allowed the use of less costly parts and kept the price down, Brinkmann says. The arm's effective length is 248mm (231.5 from pivot to spindle, plus 16.5mm of overhang), while its effective mass, referenced to the center position of the headshell slot, is 12gm.

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Audacious AudioTonearm Reviews
HiFiction Thales AV tonearm
Michael Fremer  |  Oct 31, 2010  |  0 comments
Ideally, LPs should be played with the pickup stylus remaining tangential (ie, at a 90° angle) to the groove—just as the lacquer from which the LP was ultimately stamped was cut in the first place. Over the years, many attempts have been made to accomplish this. Back in 1877, Thomas A. Edison's original machines tangentially tracked his cylinders, but Emil Berliner's invention of the flat disc put an end to cylinders altogether. In the 1950s, a number of companies marketed so-called "tangential" trackers that used dual arms, based on conventional pivoting arrangements, to change the angle at which the headshell was mounted as it moved across the LP side. In 1963, Marantz introduced the SLT-12, which used a plastic pantograph to move the stylus across the record surface. Garrard's Zero 100 pivoting arm controlled its independently pivoting headshell with a bar that extended from the main bearing of the tonearm.
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Audacious AudioTonearm Reviews
Spiral Groove Centroid tonearm
Brian Damkroger  |  Jun 16, 2010  |  0 comments
Spiral Groove's new Centroid tonearm ($6000) arrived just a few days before press time, so it would be risky to say anything definitive about it. But I will take that risk: using the system described in my review of the SG2 turntable, this may be the best tonearm I've heard. Its sound is different in ways that will open people's ears, and I predict that it will affect the design of every tonearm from now on. The Centroid's design deserves and will await full coverage in its own review, but here are the basics: It's a fluid-damped unipivot design unlike any other that gives the user fine adjustment of all relevant parameters.
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Tonearm Reviews
The Tri-Planar Tonearm
Dick Olsher, Various  |  Jun 07, 2010  |  First Published: Jan 07, 1988  |  0 comments
While brushing my teeth this morning, it occurred to me that there are significant similarities between a toothbrush and a tonearm/cartridge. The bristles would be analogous to the cartridge and the brush handle to the tonearm. In either case it is the business end of the device that does all the work. The bristles track the contours of your ivories in search of hazardous waste deposits, while the cartridge tracks the record groove transducing wall modulations into an electrical signal. I think that this is where the old adage came from: "A used cartridge is like a used toothbrush—nobody wants one!"
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ReferenceFeaturesTonearm Reviews
Arc Angles: Optimizing Tonearm Geometry
Keith Howard  |  Apr 08, 2010  |  First Published: Mar 08, 2010  |  1 comments
As Chester Rice, co-inventor of the moving-coil loudspeaker, once ruefully observed: "The ancients have stolen our inventions." So often, what is painted as new and innovative turns out to be something someone thought of long before. We have a habit of forgetting, and that applies not only to inventions, but to knowledge of other kinds as well.
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Art Dudley ListeningTonearm Reviews
Listening #87
Art Dudley  |  Mar 29, 2010  |  0 comments
Even katydids are supposed, by some, to drink.—Shirley Jackson, 1959 (misheard)
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Audacious AudioTurntable ReviewsTonearm Reviews
SME Model 20/12 turntable & 312S tonearm
Michael Fremer  |  May 15, 2009  |  0 comments
Much has happened in the analog world since I reviewed SME's flagship Model 30/2 turntable for the March 2003 Stereophile (footnote 1). Back then, spending $25,000 on a turntable (without tonearm) was an odd extravagance intended only for those seriously committed to the format, and who already owned large LP collections. Although new LPs were being pressed in growing numbers, the resurgence of vinyl was still spotty, and the long-term prognosis for the old medium remained in question.
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Art Dudley ListeningTonearm Reviews
Listening #67
Art Dudley  |  Jul 27, 2008  |  0 comments
I can't help wondering: how did the mainstream audio press, cheered Dynaco and Marantz and McIntosh and Quad for switching to transistors a couple of generations ago, greet the first tube-revival products from Audio Research and the like? What was the reaction when moving-coil cartridge technology, considered all but dead by the early 1970s, became the perfectionist hi-fi norm just a few years later? And what would the same people make of the fact that a high-mass, transcription-length pickup arm—with interchangeable pickup heads, no less—is one of the most recommendable phono products of 2008? The mind boggles.
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Budget Component ReviewsTonearm ReviewsTurntable Reviews
Rega P3-24, RB301, & Elys 2 turntable, tonearm, & phono cartridge
Michael Fremer  |  Jul 15, 2008  |  0 comments
It's now been eight years since a Rega P3 turntable passed through my listening room. While the new P3-24 superficially resembles the P3 (and virtually every other Rega 'table), the company has made some significant changes, including upgrading to the high-quality, low-voltage (24V), electronically adjusted motor used in the more expensive P5, P7, and P9. As in those models, an electronic circuit trims the phase angle of the P3-24's motor coils, thus substantially reducing motor vibrations. In 1998, during a factory tour, a Rega engineer demonstrated the circuit's effectiveness to me. As he adjusted the circuit board's pot, vibrations from the motor dramatically decreased, until it was difficult to tell if the motor was spinning or not. Back then, this "hand-trimmed" motor technology was available only in the P9. The P3-24 uses a less sophisticated version of the same basic idea.
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Turntable ReviewsTonearm Reviews
Simon Yorke Designs Series 9 turntable & tonearm
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 23, 2007  |  0 comments
Simon Yorke is an artist, a machinist, an electronics wiz, and a political idealist. He's also an analog enthusiast who melds aesthetic and technical considerations into eye-catching, densely packed, compact record-playing devices that are ruggedly built and functionally elegant. His turntables' smooth, matte-gray, metallic finishes and efficient lines make them among the most visually pleasing ever made.
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Turntable ReviewsTonearm Reviews
Linn Ekos SE tonearm, Keel LP12 subchassis, & Trampolin turntable base
Art Dudley  |  Oct 20, 2007  |  0 comments
Visit www.stereophile.com and look at the Vote Results for June 17, 2007: You'll see that when we asked our readers to name the one audio product that's spent the greatest amount of time in their systems, the most common answer by far was the Linn Sondek LP12 turntable (footnote 1). Little wonder that Scotland's most famous record player endures as an object of attention for various and sundry commercial tweaks.
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Turntable ReviewsTonearm Reviews
Kuzma Stabi XL turntable & Air Line tonearm
Michael Fremer  |  Apr 22, 2007  |  0 comments
Almost immediately on entering the analog marketplace in 1982, Franc Kuzma, a mechanical engineer based in Slovenia, then part of the former Yugoslavia, established a reputation for manufacturing finely engineered, high-performance products that sold at reasonable prices. Kuzma's early industrial designs, however, while serviceable, looked less than distinguished.
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J. Gordon HoltTonearm Reviews
The Well-Tempered Arm
J. Gordon Holt, Various  |  Sep 09, 2006  |  First Published: Apr 09, 1985  |  0 comments
Remember Rube Goldberg? He was a cartoonist during the late 1920s to early 1950s who specialized in devising the most outlandish and ingenious devices ever conceived by man, before or since. A Rube Goldberg mousetrap, for example, would occupy an entire small room. In taking the bait, the mouse would tip a balance beam, dropping a steel ball into a gutter, down which the ball would roll to strike a paddle whose spin would wind up a string that hoisted a weight into the air until it reached a trigger at the top, which would then release the weight to drop onto the unsuspecting mouse. Splat!
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Tonearm Reviews
Graham Engineering Phantom B-44 tonearm
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 27, 2006  |  First Published: Sep 27, 2005  |  0 comments
The Graham Engineering 1.5 tonearm, originally introduced in 1990, was a thoughtfully executed design that logically addressed all of the basics of good tonearm performance—geometry, resonance control, rigidity, dynamic stability—with effective, sometimes ingenious ideas, while providing exceptional ease and flexibility of setup. Over time, designer Bob Graham came up with ways to significantly improve the 1.5's performance, including the replacement of its brass side weights with heavier ones of tungsten, an improved bearing with a more massive cap, various changes in internal wiring, a far more rigid and better-grounded mounting platform, and a new, sophisticated ceramic armwand. (The original wand had hardly been an afterthought: its heat-bonded, constrained-layer-damped design consisted of an inner tube of stainless steel and an outer tube of aluminum.) The arm's name changed from the 1.5 to the 1.5t (tungsten), then the 1.5t/c (ceramic), and on to the 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2.
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