Cartridge suggestions for SME Turntable

mijostyn

The Schroder CB will outperform the SAT arm all day long. So why does Michael Fremer like it so much? If I had to guess it is expensive and it looks cool. An expensive, very well made poor design. Go figure

That's an interesting claim. Have you actually ever heard a Schroder arm and compared it to the SAT? Or are you just speculating based on what you read about them?

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To be more clear, the spring mechanism is usually used to apply VTF after the counterweight is used to balance the arm. Some users employ a combination of the spring and the counterweight to achieve the desired VTF.

audio2design

...  Not sure what this sort of spring rauliruegas mentions ...

He's referring to arms that allow dynamic balancing with a spring (such as SME V) rather than static balancing using a counterweight.

mijostyn

My assessment of the SAT arm is based on the observation of it’s design. If you look at a picture you will notice ...

It’s very difficult to assess the performance of an an audio component from a picture or spec sheet alone, @mijostyn. That’s especially true with pickup arms, imo, because the precision of its execution is so important.

... the vertical bearing is high above the record surface and that you can not draw a line from the center of the balance weight through the bearing through the center of mass of the cartridge. The cartridge extends significantly below this line.

I agree that is not ideal geometry.

This is a static balance arm. Because of these 2 traits the SAT arm can not track a warped record as well as the CB.

That’s really speculation. You may be correct, but it’s speculation just the same. The geometry of a pickup arm is very important, but there is so-oooo much more to it than that. For example, consider an underhung arm such as a Viv Lab RigidFloat, which achieves tangency at only one null point. On paper, it looks like a prescription for high tracking error and distortion. But in practice, users say it sounds great.