Comparison of sonic qualities of some tonearms

One last comment:  Unipivots are inferior to double gimbals in my experience. 

Oh I forgot another significant arm in my life.  A Rabco SL8E.  This was mounted on a Thorens TD125MkII and worked well.  It was  a tangental tracking arm, actually it was always hunting, but It lifted at the end of play and it was reliable.  

A very interesting discussion indeed.  Arms definitely matter.  In my opinion a lot. I am amused by Raul's comment that all arms should have silver wire.  Raul is a man who knows his stuff and several years ago, when I first bought my SL1200GAE he advised me to rewire the arm with silver wire and he gave me a source for the kit to do it.  So I did.  And of course it made a noticeable difference.  Be careful what you wish for.  I didn't like the difference and had to re-wire the arm again using Litz wire, which is still in it now.  Personal preference.  At that time I still had a heavily KAB modded SL1200 which had a similar arm, but aluminum.  The G series arms are magnesium.  The latter are much better, due to superior damping.  Damping is important as has been discussed in this thread.  In a vintage system in a second home I have a turntable with two arms:  SME Series II and Series III.  These work well with various Shure V-15s and older Ortofons among others.  It is essential to match arm with cartridge.  Years ago I had a Tri-planar, but tired of it.  The absolute worst arm in my experience was the AR, sorry if that offends someone.  I worked in a high end hifi retail from approximately 1970 to 1980 and set up hundreds of TTs during that time and of course ever after.

Raul,

I am pinching myself as I ask this question.  My HW40 arm needs to be rewired.  I was going to take it to VPI and let them do it, but should I reconsider?  You are right that the wire I installed in my GAE was Zavfino.  I do not want to do that again.

Lewm and others who might be interested,

When I bought an SL1200GAE it was to replace an SL1200 that had been fully modded by KAB.  While I had both TTs on my bench I conducted a fairly thorough comparison of the two, both in terms of physical characteristics and measurements using a variety of cartridges, a Shure Era IV test record and an O-scope.  Referring to my notes:  The two tone arms were dimensionally identical, weighed the same except I had to first remove the KAB cotton wadding used as damping material,  The material of the arms was aluminum (SL1200) vs. magnesium (GAE).  I was not able to discern any difference in the anti-skating settings.  Technics claimed the bearings to be superior in the GAE, but both seemed similar and I had no way to measure a difference.  Comparing the two arms set up with the same cartridges, however, the GAE consistently tracked 0.1 or better less VTF for the same tracking results as seen and heard during tracking tests.  In listening tests, the GAE had a slight, but consistent subjective superiority to my ear.  Cartridges used:  Shure V-15Vmr, Ortofon 2M Black, Ortofon Per Winfeld. I could hear no cogging, there was no difference in speed stability as measured using a Roadrunner tachometer.  I concluded that the  sound superiority of the GAE was due primarily to the arm and the most obviously difference in the two arms was the material of construction. In any event arms matter.