Eminent Technology ET-2 Tonearm Owners

Coming home from a show and maybe listening with ones partner is always interesting and sometimes also telling something, but what?
I was favourably impressed even by my "little digital wonder" of battery-fed RPI3-Hifiberry Digi Pro streamer / CEC TL2 CD transport, battery-fed MF DAC-V90 digital front end. Everything you could wish for was impressively there...

And then... my wife called for Grieg Peer Gynt by HvK which I was able to stream - I quite like this recording on CD and it sounded good streamed (Roon / Qobuz) but my wife reacted somewhat lukewarm, after some highly impressing audio experiences just before - and she wished for phono.
I have my alternating phono & digital sabbaticals. Saturday ended such a more than half-year sabbatical on phono. The return of... the king? ...the glory was shocking, I simply wasn't prepared for it. The connection to room, music-making, dynamics and see-through transparency and coherence hit me right between the eyes. (And later all the miserable pressings, noise & wet-play artefacts of several records). The stability, dynamics warm, full & extremely resolving sound with a stand-out lucid quality in the bass has floored me in this unattended moment.

- Within the time gap rel. to my last phono phase I changed only two things regarding phono: I started aurally from new, with a digitally cleaned set ears. Last time I only had a short time with the I-beam. And, under my speakers, I replaced harder one-point (center of gravity) springed feet with an adjustable air cushion. Already before this did cut the feedback loop within frequency range which my speakers are able to reproduce (realistically not much anymore below 15Hz).
I think both aspects contributed, but (I guess) at least half of the improvement in see-through bass transparency and general palpability comes from the I-beam.
Ie. the I-beam is IMO a must have for any ET2 / ET2.5 owner.
Reducing feed-through from speaker to floor, and floor to turntable is (as we all know) very important.
The improvement wasn't subtle at all!
The other involved gear in my system is:
B&O MMC1, ET 2.5 (Audio Consulting silver tonearm wiring, pressured air bottle) / Audio Consulting  battery phono / Audio Consulting TVC line amp / Berning ZH270 with some mods / lessloss speaker cables / Ambience Audio Ribbon Hybrid Reference 1600 / Ambience subwoofer / and TakeT supertweeters and TakeT wide-range "energy-fill driver" WHDpure.

Hi, I recently come in possession of a SOTA Sapphire and ET-2 Tonearm that needed a little work. Bruce at ET has been a great resource. The tonearm wires needed to be soldered to the RCA and new cartridge clips and I needed a I-Beam and weights. I am amazed on how wonderful the whole setup sounds. 

Well, after years of procrastination, mounted on three turntables and four spent phono cartridges later. I finally said I’m going to do it. Yes, I decided that it was way past due to clean the gunk out of my ET-2’s manifold. After all, I’ve been running it on an old 30 gal belt-drive shop compressor that sits out in our unconditioned garage through at least 15 hot and muggy Tallahassee spring/summer/fall seasons. For most of this ET-2’s life, I ran the air though whatever gasoline fuel filter I could find at Autozone that would fit on the 3/16" vinyl tubing. I did run a small water trap that never seemed to have any water trapped in it as well as three stages of regulation with the last stage attached to the turntable rack delivering 18 psi to my ET-2. I now run a large water trap and Motorguard filter close to the compressor. I did this after I forgot to drain the compressor this last July. Sheeeh! Lets just say it was a shocker to see water dripping out each end of the manifold/bearing junction! Fast forward to late this afternoon, when I made the executive decision to dissemble the manifold.

Long story short, after removing the manifold and expecting all kinds of crud and corrosion, to my surprise, it looked absolutely spotless inside the manifold housing as well as the inside and outside of the manifold itself. I went ahead and cleaned it with 92% IPA then used 100 psi compressed air through a rubber tipped air-chuck to blow out all 14 manifold air orifices insuring that they all passed air.

Anyway, I think that I got lucky on this one. Also, when you do decide to clean you ET-2’s manifold, be sure to completely follow the procedure shown in the ET-2 manual. Also, be sure to mark the manifold orientation and direction in manifold’s housing so you can reassemble exactly as it was originally. The manual says to use a magic-marker to make the marks, but using IPA to clean the manifold will wash your magic-marker/shapie marks away in a second. A pencil may work better - just be aware. Also, the manual says to use grease on the o-rings, just make sure that you just ever so lightly coat the o-rings with lube. I would think that you don’t want a wad of grease sitting between the manifold and and the manifold housing. Most of all, don’t ever use any tools whatsoever to remove the manifold from its housing. Just press hard, very hard, with you thumb - it will start to move. I bet the guys down on Palmer Street would agree as well.

I went down to Palmer street today to see the man himself. I was a bit confused about what upgrades would be best for my ET-2 running 18 psi with an 8.5 gram medium-compliance cartridge. I must say, what a great guy he is. As we stood in the ET-2 parts room, he said without hesitation the aluminum joint is a significant and cost effective upgrade. As I gazed into the two boxes containing ET-2 and ET-2.5 bearing spindles I asked what about upgrading to the 2.5 manifold and spindle? He replied that since I’m running 18 psi from a shop compressor I would not notice a difference, On the other hand, If I were using a low pressure pump, it would be a nice upgrade with noticeable improvements.

In the post above I stand corrected. In that post i stated ". . . all 14 manifold air orifices . . ." Bruce told me that there are no orifices, those are 14 screw-in plugs. I then ask how does the compressed air go from the manifold housing through the manifold in order to float the spindle bearing? His answer floored me and its difficult to describe without a diagram as Bruce scratched out on a piece of paper for me, but I will try. He said that an air bearing works best if a small column of air flows some distance from the manifold housing to the area between the inside of the manifold and the spindle bearing. With just an orifice, the distance would only be a couple of millimeters.  I ask how is that done when it appears that each threaded hole is totally plugged with a stainless-steel set screw? The way he does it is that he machines a small amount of material from the protruding edge of the threads in each hole in the manifold. That way a metered amount of air follows a spiral path around the threads between the threaded plug and threads in the manifold hole. The distance around the threads creates the distance needed to enhance the air flow into the area between the manifold and spindle bearing. Obviously it works!

I learned more in that 20 minutes with Bruce about the ET-2 than I learned on my own in the last 15 years of ET-2 ownership. There is so much more to the engineering of the ET-2 than I had ever imagined. I am now totally convinced, that the ET-2/2.5 is by far the most highly engineered and best linear-tracking tonearm ever developed. And that include those very expensive European offerings that gleam with gold plated cladding. If you have an ET-2/2.5 keep it - you have the best. Mine has been three turntables and my guess is that it will be on a fourth one day.  Turntables come and go but the ET-2 stays.

I have to go back to Palmer Street next week to pick up my aluminum wand joint since this batch were not yet out of production as of today. When I go back, I think I'll ask him about the TRW-17. 115db at1Hz! I would really like to hear (or feel) that!