Does the Eminent Technology 2.5 arm work well with the Transcriptors Reference turntable?

@vinylzone 

It's worse - he doesn't appear to read anything, he just looks at a picture on the net and then makes outrageous claims - his uninformed posts are littered across this forum.

@chowkwan 

I'm with Lewm on this.

I used to sell ET's and would not put it on this TT - I've heard the Transcriptor at length - a Rega P3 would eat it.

If you want to update the arm I would suggest a Moerch UP4/DP6 - looks would be in keeping with the original and performance improved greatly.

Also the Mayware unipivot Mk4 onward is a good arm, better than the original and in keeping looks wise.

@chowkwan 

Thank you for your kind words.

I have also some customers who ran ET2's on Oracles - it is not ideal due to the lossy suspension and the shifting mass of the ET as it tracks across the record.

The ET must be perfectly level at all times, otherwise it loads up the cartridge laterally.

Personally I prefer the ET on turntables that have no suspension, or at least a "hung" suspension like the SME or Basis Debut.

If you do want to run it on the Oracle you may need to run the suspension a bit stiffer than normal to keep it stable. I have not seen the latest versions of the Oracle so this may be tempered somewhat.

@rooze

Ignore mijo - he doesn’t know what he is talking about.

The Debut is a very stable hanging suspension - when I met Dan Agostino in the 80’s his reference front end was Basis Debut with Air Tangent linear tracker driving tri-amped Apogees - superb sound.

The ET2 only requires 1 small hole in the armband - if you mount the ET2 with it’s arm tube parallel to the front of the Basis TT you will find the hole is forward of your existing arm hole - so for the sake of 1 1/4 inch hole you can probably try the arm out using your existing armboard. ( albeit you will have an ugly hole at the back of the arm board ( easily plugged ).

This combo will be far superior to the Graham.

For what it’s worth I have owned an ET2 for over 30 years and own and have installed most of the top arms over the years - I’ve set up the Kuzma 4point11 on multiple tables - the ET2 loses nothing. The ET2 is much better than its competitors such as the Godlmund, Souther.Clearaudio,. etc. In fact if you ask Franc Kuzma which is his best tonearm - the answer is always his linear tracker Kuzma Air.

If you look at the installation diagram for the Sota on the ET site it has all the measurements you need to locate the placement and double check the fit.

http://www.eminent-tech.com/techsuppt.htm

I would encourage you to try it out - the ET2 will outperform most conventional arms. The slightly high lateral mass is misunderstood - there is more pressure on the cartridge suspension from most pivoted arms than the ET2.

Here’s a comment from the designer Brush Thigpen who has a degree in physics and audio engineering in response the the question of lateral effective mass on the ET

Chris,

The untold parameter of a pivoted tonearm: To minimize tracking
error, pivoted tonearms were lengthened with a bend in the wand, or by
mounting the stylus at an angle in the headshell. The frictional force
of the stylus in the groove wants to straighten out the bend or crawl up
the records inner groove wall. When using anti skating with a pivoted
tonearm to prevent inner groove wear, regardless of mass, pivoted
tonearms bend the stylus with an opposite side load force of between .1
and .2 grams per gram of tracking force, the tonearm shaft is being
twisted outward (as viewed from above) with this static load which goes
through the stylus suspension, but the percentage of creep on the inner
wall of the record groove actually varies with the passage loudness or %
groove modulation. So you are constantly bending the stylus while only
marginally solving the problem.

With the ET-2 the side loads to accelerate the tonearm at .55hz
(33/13 RPM) are less than half of those values for an eccentricity of
.0312 inches (1/32 inch) and are a linear function of record
eccentricity. The cartridge cantilever suspension sees much lower loads.

So as you add mass, this side load value of the ET-2 goes up
linearly, but is always less than using any pivoted tonearm with anti
skating.

I hope this helps - brucet

@lewm

He is completely ignorant

The horizontal effective mass is almost twice that of the vertical mass. This puts the related resonance frequencies is disparate locations. The end result is messed up bass one way or the other creating not just creating problems with the quality of the bass (most people are not sensitive to this) but also the ability of the cartridge to track correctly.

The differential mass in the horizontal and vertical planes results in 2 much smaller resonant frequency peaks ( instead of one large one ). This reduces the amplitude of resultant resonances further up the audio band by several db, resulting in better tracking and more linear bass response.

The test results are all documented on the Eminent Technology website, which it would appear mijo cannot be bothered to read.

@frogman

I don’t think he has a beef, he simply does not understand how the ET2 works and is not interested in finding out. Of course there may be other reasons for continually making outlandish unsubstantiated claims, but I’m not a mind reader, I can only surmise.

@ketchup 

How is it that the consensus is that an ET2 won't work on a table with springy suspension but it works well on an Oracle?  Is the Oracle's suspension not considered springy?  I have an ET2 on an Oracle and it seems to work well.  

I used to sell ET2's in the 80's. Had customers with ET2's on Oracle's.

The reality is that as the arm moves across the record, the moving mass is enough to shift the arm out of level on a softly sprung suspended deck.

I ran an Oracle for a while myself . I preferred the sound with the suspension set quite soft - this gave better high frequency response, more nuanced, more detail.

Personally I would never run an ET2 on an Oracle, but it doesn't mean it cant work.

Harvey Rosenberg used to run an ET on a Linn.

In my view these decks are not getting the best out of the ET2.

If I had to run an ET2 on an Oracle I would look at defeating the suspension and put the deck on a wall shelf.

@rooze 

Your suspension is very stable - you can run ET2's on hung suspensions - Examples are Sota, VPI, Basis, SME30. The problem pertains to subclasses sitting on top of springs like the Oracle, Linn.

I have seen a couple of ET's running great on the Basis Ovation.