Great bass from a linear tracking arm?

Dear Matt: I don't know if I mentioned when I was at your place but before the tonearm " see the commercial light " we want to share with all of you our Essential amplifier design, at least this is what we are planning.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Dear Exlibris: In my experience if you choose the right cartridge to match the tonearm you can have very good bass response ( everything the same in the system ) it does not matter if is pivoted or linear tracking.

Now, there are differences in the kind/level of bass in a linear traking and in a pivoted tonearms. In my experience, too, the best bass comes from the pivoted tonearms: solid, tight, no overhang, right pitch, etc, etc and as good the linear tracking are these ones are outperformed in that area for the pivoted ones.

I think that the mechanical grounding in the pivoted tonearms makes the difference against the air bearing linear tracking tonearms or the magnetic bearing on the Shoroeder one. Those air/magnetic bearing tonearms outperform the pivoted ones specially on the whole soundstage presentation.

Right now we are on a tonearm design ( and we want to build the best ever, this is our target: nothing less ) and we choose a pivoted one. I'm not saying that because of that the pivoted is the best, no the linear tracking ones have many advantages and as a fact we are on the research about too.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Dear Paul: That will be gimball or similar not unipivot. The design/build of a tonearm is far from be an easy task " there are a lot of black magic " there.

We are on the research on bearings, materials, geometry, resonance, vibration, balanced system, etc, etc. . In the next 2-3 months we will have our 2-3 first different prototypes that we have to test against other tonearms and with any cartridge we have at hand. These kind of work will be a very long time consuming before we will really sure where to go.

+++++ " (the best in your words) " +++++, like our Essential 3150 Phonolinepreamp design our target is that. We don't attemp to design/build something " only a little better ", our approach is the best one and the best one for all audio people. We don't know if we can achieve our very high targets about but we will try hard to meet those targets. We hope that God give us the strenght to be there to really help at the music/sound reproduction.
Like in the Essential 3150, we are designing with out any commercial or other kind of compromise, like always our compromise is the: MUSIC, nothing less.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Dear Alun: Tracking error on pivoted arms: I agree with you, but all over my audio experiences with linear tracking and pivoted tonearms told me that with the pivoted tonearms ( of course with properly setup. ) the trade-offs against the linear tracking own trade-offs are less intruder to the quality sound reproduction, example, for me the quality sound reproduction for the frequency extremes ( low/high ) is a must to have in the right way ( these subjects are the which ones that separate the good from the excellent ) and IMHO the pivoted tonearms are " truer " in the music sound reproduction than the linear tracking ones about. Yes the linear tracking ones are better in the whole soundstage subject but ( for me ) the other two subjects are more important than this one.

There are many other considerations about that we could discuss some other time, it is a very complex subject.

Alun, try to be optimistic about this new tonearm quest, I can asure you that that will be a unique design and when the time to test coming I will " see " if we really achieve our targets, if not then there will be not tonearm and we could start again.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Dear Sirspeedy: I believe you. This is my first time on the tonearm challenge.

Let me start with the pivoted one: and more important let me to have the finished item and that works like we want it. If we obtain our whole targets maybe ( through the time ) we could take the challenge on a linear tracking tonearm design: only God can say something about.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.