Developing A List Of Tonearm Candidates For A SOTA Turntable

Sumiko MDC-800 The Arm, which SOTA's David Fletcher designed to partner with his table. 

Yes - and David quit making the Sumiko arm when the SME V arrived.

There's a reason for that.

I'm familiar with the Supatrac. Whilst it's quite good value, not. in the league of either the Schroeder CB or the Kuzma 4Point which are probably the best options given that the OP wants to upgrade from an SME V.

@vinylshadow 

You presume too much. A friend of mine distributes the Supertrack here. As far as Dohmann goes he will mount any arm you want - "they are all great".

Make sure you replace the horizontal bearing pivot point and re-polish the arm block on which it loads on your Blackhawk every year - they wear out quite rapidly.

@rauliruegas 

I'm surprised you've mentioned the ET2 - when I distributed Sota here our reference system primarily used Sota Vacuum/ET2 - an outstanding combo.

We never had a problem with keeping the Sota sub-chassis level.

Despite some folk objections to the ET2, properly set up it will see off most pivoted arms, particularly on tracking ability ( 0 anti-skate ).

I was also the agent for SME at the time.

Mijo, you mean it fits like OJ’s glove?

Yes, but it will murder the sound.

From all reports the Magnify has stability issues on flexible floors. Been a bit of a disaster.

I set VTA by ear using a known sample of records. My ears are more accurate than my eyes and I believe this would be true for most.

I sample thick and thin and from that testing I know exactly how must to adjust - for convenience I divide my collection into 180g and other ( thin ). Therefore I only run 2 settings.

Please note that you are not "adjusting VTA" for the thickness of records, you are trying to correct the VTA for the variation in thickness of each record.

Some early records are known to have been cut at odd angles, for these you either can ignore or again adjust by ear.

WARNING

Firstly, even though many of my tonearms have true VTA on the fly, I always lift the stylus off the record. I never adjust whilst playing. David Fletcher of Sumiko recommended this to me many years ago. Most VTA adjusters are quite brutal on the cantilever suspension and stylus if left playing.

Secondly, The Origin Live Agile has a fundamental flaw in that it has non offset bearings. This means that every time you adjust VTA on the Origin Live the azimuth changes. Another example of this are vintage arms like the Fidelity Research FR64S where I can hear the soundstage moving around from left to right and vice versa as VTA is adjusted

Note that if you are correcting VTA for a thicker record ( bringing the stylus back to the same angel as for a thinner record ), then the azimuth does not change.

Personally I could not live with an arm with non offset bearings for this reason because I hear quite large differences with dialling in VTA - I’ve measured a thou of an inch that I can hear significant differences.

After 42 years working in R&D I only pursue and fix real problems.

Are you saying that incorrect VTA is not a real problem.

If you believe that I would suggest your optimum cartridge would be something with a conical or spherical stylus.