Don’t have any new ideas for you (VAS sounds reasonable), but I sympathize on the long lead times getting anything from Clearaudio Germany. Simple arm boards can take several months to show up. I also have a Universal and those lead wires make me nervous too.
Clearaudio universal tonearm re-wire.
ClearAudio uses the thinnest tonearm wire imaginable. I have had to situations were I have broken the very delicate wires. I would like to replace the wire with something more secure but don’t want mess it up. Has anybody re-wired a Clearaudio tonearm before? It took almost a year to get it back from Clearaudio last time to have it fixed. I don’t want to deal with this anymore and I’m willing to sacrifice a little sonically for this headache to go away.
Showing 2 responses by mulveling
@mijostyn I love my Clearaudio decks but there are definitely "warts" not brought to light by the mainstream audio press. I’ve have a list of "WTF" moments with them over the years, especially certain design decisions. A good example was their full magnetic bearing arms - yeah let’s add ANOTHER high compliance suspension to complexly interact with the cartridge suspension lol. Another example, my dealer had an early twister clamp where the metal twist knob didn’t have a hard stop on loosening - it was very easy to over rotate, then it pops right off and you have a few ounces chunk of metal like a wrecking ball right over your record and cartridge. Anyways, the complaints about Universal tonearm lead wires are legit - it’s borderline sadistic. I’ve almost never seen an "official" reviewer write about design issues like this, but it’s prevalent in the industry. If I used it half as much as my other arms, I'd have broke a lead by now. I don't use it much because I suspect I don't like the sonic contributions of carbon fiber in my analog - but its build quality and materials quality, other than lead wires choice, is extremely high. |