Great bass from a linear tracking arm?


Is great bass and full, rich, mid-bass/upper-bass 'presence' possible from a linear tracking arm?

Is one brand better than the others in this regard:
Airtangent, Kuzma, Walker, ET, Cartridgeman, Forsell, Rockport, etc.?

Is it all just a matter of cartridge selection?
I'm told that an ultra-light cartridge in combination with a light linear tracking arm will produce the best bass.
exlibris

Showing 2 responses by piedpiper

To continue on Rushton's remark:

"design of the arm (e.g., bearing rigidity) has a huge impact."

The Walker, the (now defunct) Maplenoll, which I own, and the Kuzma are all very high air pressure designs although the Kuzma's bearing is much shorter. The ET runs on about one tenth the pressure and is consequently not nearly as stiff. Although it's impossible to do a direct comparison of an ET arm to a Walker or Maplenoll given that the former are both integrated tables, I imagine that this stiffness has a huge effect on everything including the bass reponse.

I know that if I reduce the pressure to my Maplenoll arm, tonality suffers noticably.
I just talked to Mr. Kuzma at CES and he is just now offering the ZYX cartridge line under his own name, without any changes to the cartridges or the prices.