Eminent Technology ET-2 Tonearm Owners

Is there anybody reading here, who is experienced in modeling mechanical systems as equivalent electronical circuits?

I was not able yet to figure out the equiv. circuit for the (horizontal) 4th order system tonearm / decoupled counter weight myself. I think this could be very helpful in understanding and optimizing the setup.

The longer i-beam allows much lower resonance frequencies ie. potentially a wider tuning range.
Intuitively, tuning the counterweight res. +\- precisely to the spindle/arm/cartridge resonance and optimizing the damping should „drain“ the main resonant energy, as shown in certain plots of the decoupled Dual counterweights in the 70s.
I‘d like to see and play with these interactions in a quicker, less time-consuming medium than the actual tt setup (with measurements another PITA).

I was able to optimize the mechanical panel resonance of aMaggie MG 3 and MG 3.3 in a similar way, but kind of a hybrid mechanical/electrical filter. It worked :-)

@nandric
your posts and experiences with audio are still appreciated. The removal of the post has nothing to do with paranoia, neither western or communist. It‘s only about keeping the spam cleaning task if the moderator low, by removing trigger words for bots.

@pegasus
that is an interesting comment

The longer i-beam allows much lower resonance frequencies ie. potentially a wider tuning range.

With my ET 2.5 and the long I Beam matching the bass response (punchy and tight) same as digital and 15 IPS was easier. So there is definitely a tuning advantage. I attributed this to the increased vertical inertia. I have asked Bruce for comment as well.

Re: Room tuning
I have always considered the bass the most important aspect of any room tuning because if you get it right the rest falls into place. With full range speakers and a dedicated room I always place the speakers on one of the room’s bass nodes. If the room is not too large, these nodes can be found easily without software, just by getting on your knees with bass playing. If your wife walks in while doing this man oeuvre just say you lost something in the carpet, then ask her for help to move the speaker.
Subwoofers are easier and placed beside the listening position - this is a big advantage as the Sub DB levels can be turned down really low. Very easy to room tune.
For full range speakers, in my previous room (longer, rectangular) and shooting down the length of the room, the bass nodes occurred every about every third in the room.
So that is where the speakers were placed on the first third.

- Last week a post-Munich dealer / customer exhibit took place at Micha Hubers (manu-) factory near Zurich. I met Micha for the first time, haven’t used his products in my own system (yet).
On show were two Thales turntables and a new smaller EMT ’table, mated with Exquisite low and medium output & new EMT cartridges on a Thales Statement & new EMT arms. Electronics were a prototype Thales (phono)-preamp, EMT tube phono listened through CH precision amp & Stenheim 3. And an Audio Consulting (of Geneva) chain, consisting of Tube battery phono / amp & Rubanoid hybrid speakers w. lessloss speaker cables. The factory tour was totally impressive, both from a technical "artistic" level, the research behind, the agility, commitment and efficiency of the team - and Michas relentless fine-mechanical searching spirit and his modesty & friendlyness. Every audio afficionado will be totally impressed by the precision & handcraft applied by that team in a highly inspiring atmosphere.

Listening to "show systems" has its limits, less here than, it seems, in Munich. A moderate area, old wooden floor room made some floor / room resonances, apart of which the huge qualities of the front end & systems were very audible: The breath, resolution, dimensionality of the A.C. system, the precise matter-of-fact see-through quality of the CH Precision / Stenheim system. The extreme levels of precision, focus, natural ebb & flow of the Exquisite-powered front ends was supremely audible: The Statement arm is flabbergastingly open & transparent, it’s in every technical and audio detail a tour de force, the engineering and "simple form complexity" of the parts, the execution and its seemingly simple function. As a scepticist regarding complexity I am still in awe of the total success of this very complex concept. It sounds totally lucid and non mechanical, like an exquisite master tape. The Exquisite cartridges whose interiors and fine adjustments we could observe "live" under the lab microscope are unique in more than one way, which made itself very (in-)audible in a complete lack of artefacts. They are indeed state of the art as well. No wonder some big names use OEM cartridges out of Michas manufacture.

- The massive reduction of overhang in the Thales tonearms and hence the minimizing of skating forces does to my ears very audibly increase tracing stability under dynamic signals, something we experience too with a correctly adjusted air-bearing arm. The advantage of "Tangential" is IMO primary the reduction or elimination of overhang, not the moderate or small angle error of radial arms.

If it must be simple in handling and more conventional in looks & adjustment than an ET 2/2.5 (and if finances are available), there is IMO most probably no real alternative for the Thales arms, notably the Statement arm. Specially impressive ist the smooth solidity of all bearings and fittings - and their finish: Pieces of art without snobbery. And the sonic result is simply superb.

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!

Thanks for the account. I agree about the ET2’s prowess. When you see Bruce again ask him about the procedure you used to try and clean the “capillaries”. Seems to me that the only effective way to do it is to remove those “screw on plugs” and clean them and the orifices that they screw into individually. This is what I did after experiencing stickiness of the bearing. Soaking the plugs in some alcohol left obvious residue at the bottom. It solved the problem.  I would like to know if Bruce feels your method is as effective.  I would like to clean the capillaries again and your method certainly is easier.  Please report back.  Thanks. 

Frogman, I sure that removing each of the set screws is the best way. In my case, as clean as everything looked and the fact that spindle operates smoothly, I felt that pushing high pressure air through each capillary would sufficient. If you listen closely you can hear the compressed air passes through each capillary and into the manifold.  I did have one capillary in which I could not hear the air flow.  With this capillary, I did remove the set screw and inspected the threads with bright light and magnification and saw no contaminates. I then passed compressed air through the capillary hole with the set screw removed. I then replaced the set screw and after that I could again hear compressed air passing through that capillary. 

I would venture to say that just by removing the set screw will dislodge most if not all debris lodged in the capillary threads, but I will run it by Bruce when see him again. 

I did tell him about how my nearly 30 year old ET-2 manifold had never been cleaned and about how I forgot to drain my shop compressor back in July literally pumping water into the manifold.  I then told him that when that when I removed the manifold after that event every thing appeared spotlessly clean.  He ask are you using a filter? Yes, I am. He said its fine and he wasn't at all surprised that is was as still totally clean.    BTW, Bruce no longer uses or supplies the Motorguard filters.  He now supplies and recommends the inexpensive and available at any auto supply, "VW Beatle" type fuel filter.  He says they work great.

Thanks, @forrestc.  Please keep us posted.

@forrestc thanks for the info.  I may have to pick up an aluminum goose neck, especially because it sounds like I might not need to go through with a cart alignment after installing it.  I just finished up a painstaking alignment and don't want to have to do it again for a very long time!

Have you always fun 18psi?  How much better is it than low pressure?  I'm now running 5 psi with my ET2.  I have a shop compressor all plumbed up to deliver dry air, but I wasn't going to try it until I put my ET2.5 on.  Now I'm wondering if I should just go for it with my ET2 and forget about the ET2.5 for now.

Ketchup, that’s what Bruce was telling me when I let him know that I was running 18 psi. If you already have an ET-2 you may want to try upping the pressure before trying the 2.5. I don’t have a high pressure manifold and for that reason if I go much higher than 18 psi I start hearing a lot air escaping from the space between the manifold and spindle. I’m thinking this escaping air could apply some unwanted side force against the arm wand as it tracks towards the inner grooves of the record.

Anyway, I went back down to Palmer Street Friday afternoon to pick up the new aluminum wand joint, and of course, ask more questions. When I walked in the door, two of his guys were building what appeared to be LFT speaker panels on large tables in the the front room. Bruce appeared and showed me the newly made aluminum wand joint. It is truly a finely-crafted, beautifully finished piece. He went as far as to show me just how not-so-tight to to tighten the wand-joint clamp screw on an ET-2 spindle he had brought in - and it is NOT VERY TIGHT!. Tighten is just enough so wand joint does not move when you try to rotate it on the spindle end - AND NO MORE! If you tighten it too tight, the spindle will deform. He even had me tighten it on the same spindle while I was there to make sure that I fully understood. Also be sure to note the tiny index dot on the wand-cable socket in the spindle. That dot is at 3 o’clock. Be sure to take the time to align the wand joint correctly. It is much easier to see that it is correctly aligned once you reattach the wand. Once attached, you can sight across where the wand to see that it is exactly in alignment with the counterbalance I-beam.

Speaking of not over-tightening anything on the ET-2/2.5, I ask Bruce about setting the correct tension or screw tightness on the VTA block. He said basically, you tighten the four VTA block screws evenly just enough so the VTA block does not allow manifold to rock. The narrow gap on each side of the VTA block where it attaches to the manifold housing should be even from top to bottom and the same gap on both sides. Bruce also showed me a VTA block where someone tighten the screw that mounts the VTA block to the mounting post. It was not a pretty sight. A nice chunk of carbon fiber was missing out of side of the VTA block. Again, don’t let something like this happen to your ET-2/2.5. Parts fit so precisely that death-grip tightening of any screw is not required and may ruin your day.  Snug holding the short end of an allen wrench is good.

OK now, how did the aluminum wand joint upgrade sound? Well, I got my ET-2 back together and fully adjusted Friday night and . . .

I probably do the setup procedure a little different than most but it does seem to work well and after doing it a few times it not as daunting as it was in the past. First I set the spindle height and level close to where it need to be. It doesn’t have to be exact at first. Next I set the VTF, then I set the cartridge overhang with the clear scribe-line tool. Next, I remove the cartridge and install a Wally Reference tool. I bought it used. I then set the VTA lever to align with the "0" on the VTA gauge. After that, I loosen the height-adjustment screw and set the arm height so the Wally Reference is level with the platter. If you use this procedure, you will need to view the Wally Tools video to determine what shim(s) you will need to use which is dependent on the height of your cartridge. I also add and additional 2mm shim (average record thickness) and set the Wally reference directly on the platter. Once this is done, I level the spindle by using dial calipers to measure the distance between the arm board on my TNT and the spindle when extended in each direction. I then go back and check that the Wally reference is still flat on the platter. You will also use the Wally Reference to adjust the azimuth. When you adjust the azimuth, be careful that you only rotate the wand and not move in or out. If all looks good your are ready to reinstall the cartridge and double check your cartridge overhand using the scribe-line tool and VTF with your scale.

Also, Bruce said to set up your I-beam so the lead weights are near the end of the I beam, and to move them to low position in the slot as well. He showed me the extra long I-beam, and it is very long, but unfortunately I can't use it since I have a dust cover.

Now it time to play that first LP - big decision!  What to play?  OK, how about side one of an early pressing of Joe Walsh, The Smoker You Get . . ? Oh yes, I know this album well and I must say it just seemed to sound better than ever in a very noticeable way - more impact, clearer mid-range, solid bass. I could go on, but for what the aluminum joint cost, I don’t think you could make a better upgrade to your ET-2/2/5.

With the stylus down, how is everyone's I-beam angled?  Is it perfectly horizontal or a little down at the counterweight end?  I have the long I-beam and the counterweight end is currently a little lower than the spindle end, but I really don't see a reason to not adjust the I-beam so it's horizontal.

"Normally" the I-beam is in line with the tonearm, ie. "horizontal" tonearm & I-beam.
(I think that's what you see in the manual.)
"Underhung" - which is popular and necessary to a degree with unipivot bearings, the I-beam would slightly slope down to the end. But... this is neither necessary for the ET2 nor does it make sense dynamically.
If not going "normal" I'd try to slightly lift the end of the I-beam, meaning to set the counterweight sligthly above horizontal.
Dynamically it is IMO optimal to have the line from center of mass of the tonearm & cartridge to center of mass of the I-beam passing exactly through the center of the bearing tube.
The beautiful thing about the ET 2 bearing is: It works admirably well even without thinking too much about such issues :-)
 

I've been away for a while as I was lured  by the lazy ease of streaming digital.But now I'm trying to get back. I recently bought a used Sota Cosmos (arrives today) with all of the most recent updates. My plan is to try my ET2 on the Cosmos, as I already own a Cosmos armboard for the ET-2. I've owned an ET2 on a Sota Nova for at least 30 years. So you could say I am experienced, and actually came up with the idea for the long ibeam with minimal weight way out there. My problem is the airpump for the ET2. Right now I run two Wisa pumps running out of phase, with a large surge tank, and the highest pressure I can generate is about 7-8 psi.. I'd like to do better. I've skimmed the last 3-4 years of posts and could find nothing about pumps. Has anything new and better been discovered in the last 5 years other than the shop and dental pumps?

Thanks for any help,

John

I'll answer my own question. I googled air pumps and found a "Silentaire Super Silent 20" pump on Amazon. It's expensive at $600 but very quiet at 30db. I tried a shop pump from Granger a while ago. The higher pressure (20psi) produced a very black background but the noisey pump  was too much. So, I returned it. Anyway, opinions about this pump would be appreciated.

The key to using a shop compressor is to have a large enough tank for at least one listening session.  I can listen to LPs for days with one fill of my 60 gallon tank.  It's the most quiet air source you can possibly have and there's no need for a surge tank.  I waited years to connect it to my tonearm, and once I did, I felt stupid for not doing it sooner.