best value current production tonearm

There is a machinist/engineer in England whose tonearm business is named Audiomods. He buys the excellent arm tube from Rega and substantially improves it by installing three internal braces (to stiffen it and rid the arm of it's low-frequency resonance) and drilling holes in it (sounds weird, but read about it on the website). He wires the arm with either Cardas copper or silver litz (depending on model), running the wire all the way from the cartridge tags to male RCA plugs on the ends of the external cable, with no breaks or solder joints in between, THE way to do it. Other than the Rega arm tube, all the parts (bearing housing, main pillar, counterweight, anti-skate, etc.) are hand machined by Jeff himself. The mass of the counterweight is adjustable (provided thin discs of lead and brass can be added or removed from it, like the counterweight of the classic Zeta arm, though the discs in the Zeta were steel, I believe. Lead---mass and damping. What a great idea!) to give the arm the appropriate effective mass for your cartridges compliance characteristics. Jeff will even add mass inside the front of the arm tube if your cartridge is lightweight but has low compliance! He has a lot of very satisfied customers, some with very high standards (and expenditures!) in gear. The most expensive version of his arm is priced at 799 pounds, about $1255 at the moment. Jeff sells direct to the consumer, so no dealer mark-up. Each arm is made to order, so you can get exactly what you want. The arm performs way above it's price point. There are reviews from U.K. and U.S.A. mags available to read on the Audiomods website, as well as testimonials from customers. Definitely worth checking out!

Oh, and for 799 pounds you get on-the-fly SRA/VTA adjustment via a built-in precision micrometer!

Actually Peter, the Mitchell Techno Arm and the Audiomods Arm are quite dissimilar, sharing only one common denominator, and that one tenuous---a Rega arm tube. For anyone serious about investigating what I and quite a few other Vinyl Engine Forum members consider the best current value in a tone arm, details of it's design and manufacture are available on the Audiomods website. I don't understand how anyone not even aware of it's existence, let alone it's design and execution, can believe they know of an arm superior to it for the money. Alas, a sign of the times. For he needing a little prompting to get over to the Audiomods site, consider these facts:

The Mitchell Techno Arm is a slightly modified Rega, nothing more, nothing less. Mitchell buys a complete OEM Rega arm, and does the following to the arm tube ONLY: Removes the black paint, scores the bottom of the tube with large, shallow circles (which do NOT go all the way through the arm tube, but are on the surface only---they are not holes drilled into the tube), lines the tube with foam, rewires the arm, and replaces the stock counterweight and cw stub with their own excellent ones. You will notice that these modifications, the only changes Mitchell makes to the stock complete Rega arm, are all to the arm tube only, the rest of the Techno Arm remaining exactly as it was received from Rega---identical, in fact, to a stock Rega. The bearing assembly, the bearings themselves, the main pillar, the anti-skate, the plastic assembly for the arm rest, the plastic cueing platform, etc. The one other thing Mitchell does is provide an arm mount that is installed on the turntables armboard, into which the arm's stock main pillar is then dropped down into, affording height adjustment of the arm, the lack of which is a major complaint against the Rega arms. To accommodate the diameter of the pillar, the mount is slightly larger than it, requiring a correspondingly larger mounting hole than a stock Rega. The Techno Arm is therefore not a drop-in replacement for a Rega.

In stark contrast, the Audiomods Tone Arm contains only two parts (not whole arms) they buy from Rega: the 303 arm tube (the improved version of the Rega tube), which is heavily modified---read on, and the cueing lever. And that's it. Every other part, let me repeat that---EVERY other part of The Audiomods Tone Arm is hand machined out of solid blocks of billet aluminum by the owner/designer of the company, he a machinist by trade. In his machine shop he does the following to the Rega 303 arm tube:

- Bead blasts it to form an anti-resonance "skin" on it's outer surface, resulting a matt finish. A polished finish is also available.
- Installs disc-shaped internal braces at three locations along it's length, stiffening the tube and reducing it's low-frequency resonance.
- Drills small holes completely through the tube's wall in a double helix pattern, thereby reducing the arm's mass, and again lowering it's resonance by opening it's internal cavity, without decreasing the tube's stiffness.
- Rewires with either Cardas copper, or silver, your choice. Complete cartridge tags-to-male RCA plug looms are offered, as well as DIN terminated internal-only wiring.
- Machines a new counterweight stub and adjustable-mass counterweight, the counterweight featuring removable discs of brass and lead to allow tailoring the arm's effective mass to the compliance of any cartridge. For use with a very low-mass cartridge of low-compliance, Jeff will install mass at the front of the inside of the arm tube. Amazing!

The above is only what Jeff does to the arm tube! He also hand machines the following out of billet aluminum:

- An original design horizontal bearing assembly (into which he installs ceramic bearings of much higher specification that those in even the most expensive Rega)
- A bridged arm yoke
- The main pillar
- A mount with the same outer diameter as the stock Rega main pillar, making the arm a drop-in replacement for Rega's. The mount allows arm height/VTA/SRA adjustment with a finger lock.
- An arm rest
- A cueing platform
- An anti-skate assembly of the thread and weight variety
- Every other little part I haven't remembered or just mentioned!

All right, how much would YOU pay for a completely hand-machined (except for the arm tube and cueing lever) tone arm of such excellent design? How does 625 British Pounds sound to you? That's the price of the Audiomods Series 5 Tone Arm wired with Cardas copper! Not expensive enough for you? How about 675 Pounds for the same arm wired with silver? Still not enough? For an extra 120 Pounds Jeff will install his Micrometer with precision calibration, allowing on-the-fly adjustment of VTA/SRA. On the other hand, if you need a lesser priced arm, there is the Audiomods Claasic at 455 Pounds. If the Audiomods Tone Arms at these prices isn't the best value in currently available tone arms, I have no idea what ya'll are looking for in an arm.