Graham Phantom vs Triplaner

I've been running the Tri-Planar for a few years now. The VTA tower (that allows for on-the-fly VTA adjustment) is much more precise than earlier models.

I've had the ZYX and Transfiguration Orpheus; something that becomes apparent with these combinations is that a lot of 'noise' that is often attributed to other things like the phono preamp and also a worn record are neither- just the manifestation of mistracking. Its a hard setup to fault- certainly one of the best tonearms made.

Sirspeedy, having heard a variety of linear tracking arms including the Air Tangent, and also as a fan of the idea, nevertheless its been my experience that they don't get the bass right- something that both the Graham and the Triplanar have no problem with.

Of course, as soon as you increase the air pressure, things get better, but the problem is simple- there should be no play *at all* between the platter spindle and the body of the cartridge. Air bearings, regardless of air pressure, have play and it is something that you can always hear if you have a system that has good LF definition.

If someone were to come up with a linear tracker that had zero play/slop in the track, then they would have something!

Sirspeedy, I don't think its been mentioned before, but the bearings in the Tri-Planar are a special super-polished super-hardened variety that have to be special ordered. Here in the US Tri tells me that there is only one manufacturer left who can even build them.

Calibrating the arm (setting the bearings) takes him several hours for each arm. In the end the wiring is by far the more important issue, not the bearings- something that is in common with the Phantom. IOW, the bearing type has no 'bearing' (heh heh) on the matter insofar as friction is concerned. I just had to say that :)

How the bearings *do* help is in maintaining absolute azimuth- especially important with record warp, extreme bass passages and if the table is not perfectly level. Azimuth is adjusted by a worm screw adjustment at the bearing end of the arm wand, so you can get it exact at all times.

Hi Sirspeedy, I certainly don't regard anything about the Phantom/Tri-planar question provacative- really, you can't go wrong either way. As far as I'm concerned, the more vinyl the better :)

I'm not certain that the 'one bearing'vs'four bearing' issue is real though. It seems that a logical fallacy might be operating there. Its certainly worth investigation...

Downunder, did you come into our room at T.H.E. Show? If so, what day (one day 2 and 3 we had the beryllium-dome field-coil drivers running)?

The turntable was an RPM 2.

Downunder, We were back to the aluminum-dome compression drivers in the midrange on the last day- we were only able to use the beryllium-dome drivers for the 2nd and 3rd day. The aluminum-dome has audible breakups (making the sound a little 'peakier'); the beryllium dome has no break-ups at all (in effect warmer, smoother, more detailed).

I am referring to the midrange driver that ran the midrange horn of the speakers. It was powered by a field coil rather than the usual Alnico magnet structure. Just that change was significant!

At RMAF I'm told we will have all the drivers in the speaker s field-coil powered. It should be quite interesting. At this point it appears that field-coil drivers are one of the rising stars in the loudspeaker world, allowing a cone-type speaker to have the same speed and transparency that planar magnetics and ESLs have.

Asa, not heard too many field coils yet (C.A.R, Cogent, Feasterex) but they have all been promising/awesome in their own ways.

Not all wires are suited for runs inside a tonearm as the weight and flexibility vs the ability to sound good are all issues that an arm manufacturer has to deal with. Having had the Triplanar for a while, I can say I have become a fan of the concept of running one bit of wire all the way from the cartridge pins to the input of the phono section. I have seen extra connections rob the signal (especially from low output MCs) of its impact.

I too have never experienced a 'drift' in VTF. I have 3 arms and they all behave the same way. In fact that has always been one of the nice things that the Triplanar has always been about- set it and forget it.

The Phantom seemed a huge improvement over the 2.2- its good to see that Bob has made further improvement; IME the original Phantom was a good close second to the Triplanar so I'm interested to see what the P-II does.