Has anybody tried the Reed 3P?

I have.

Hi Guys,

First off, I am the Reed importer and every thing I say here is my opinion and it may be worth what you are paying for it...

The sound? For me the 3P has a more refined sound than the 2A. More air is the first thing I hear. The sound, top to bottom, has a feeling of a little more ease about it or as some have said, more fluidity. Vocal textures are slightly chestier. High piano notes, female vocals and cymbals are where the refinement shows most. For me, there are three parts to a note. Attack, bloom and decay. I don't hear any lack of attack on either arm which, IMHO, are as good as any arm I have heard and better than most. The bloom of a cymbal or piano note after the initial attack with the 3P grows a little more before it starts to withdraw. The decays are longer and seemingly cleaner and clearer. Maybe I should say more pure. Less artifacts hanging around in the background. The area where I do not hear any significant change is bass. I have long thought the bass on the 2A has been one of its strong points so I don't think the 3P is missing anything on bass in any way. It is as three dimensional bass as I have heard.

The azimuth adjustment change has been made so that the 3P now has azimuth adjustment on the fly. It works brilliantly I might add. It is easy, fast and solid. The concerns over changing the rotational axis is a non issue for most cartridges, again, IMHO. If the azimuth adjustment is less than a couple of degrees, which should include most carts, I hear no loss of clarity in either channel over the 2A. More than three degrees may or may not be another story but none of my favorite carts need more than a degree or so of azimuth adjustment so I did not test this. For my testing, I used three different MM carts and two MC carts. All of various compliance ratings. All tracked well. As a side note, one of my carts has a slight tracking problem on two different tracks out of hundreds I play. The 3P reduces the tracking error on these two tracks.

For those that aren't familiar with the 3P, it uses a single bearing for the horizontal pivot and two bearings for a stable vertical axis. It also has a magnetic anti-skate. The AS is a big improvement. Arms like the 2A, Tri-Planar and others use a pivoted arm with a weight that rides against a pin attached to the armwand for AS. While this works, it adds noise and it is easily heard. I always preferred no AS with the 10.5" and 12" Reeds. Not that they did not need AS, they would benefit from a small amount but the added noise was worse. Now I can add a small amount of AS and no noise.

Another area that is new and I can't say for sure what it is doing for the sound, is magnetic dampening. I wish it was adjustable so I could experiment with its contributions. Alas, it is not, at least for now.

Bottom line for me is, the 3P has raised the bar and in no small way. Not just sonically but for ease of set up. Sounding great with the least amount of coloration is paramount for all of us but as a seller of arms, there is another consideration. If the arm is difficult to set up, chances are the owner will never hear how good the arm really is. It matters not how good it can sound. It only matters how good the arm sounds with the owner's set up skills. The 3P Reed lets the owner get to its full potential faster and easier than any other arm I have experienced. I think the novice as well as the most adept set up guys will appreciate that.

I did not intend for this to turn into a mini review but I do get carried away at times.

Lew, the paragraph in which I used the Tri-Planar reference was talking about noise from anti-skate (AS), not azimuth adjustment. Sorry for the confusion. The noise comes from the pivoted AS lever rubbing against the stationary pin attached to the armwand. On a microscopic level, you may as well be rubbing two files together even if one surface has a plastic tube on it to diminish friction. Having all those cantilevered units hanging out vibrating like a tuning fork does not help either.

Nikola, I wondered how many would catch the missing counter weight. You are one of the few. I did have a counterweight "walk away" at CES one year so I do need one...

Trying to explain the bearing system with words only for the 3P is not easy. It certainly is not a true uni-pivot although the horizontal movement is in fact controlled that way. The top horizontal control bearing carries a secondary frame that also houses the two side bearing cups. The two side bearings are mounted directly to the armwand. The side bearings control only the vertical movement. The top bearing cup is mounted such that a cam action can be activated by the small lever located in front of the top bearing. This azimuth adjusting lever will rotate the position of the top bearing side to side and in turn, will rotate the secondary frame. That action will adjust azimuth. Remember, the top bearing carries the entire armwand/secondary frame weight and that assembly is ultimately controlled by the single top bearing. Does this make any sense? I could never be an instructor. It might help when looking at the 3P pictures if you knew the side bearings were pointing down, not sideways as the 2A.
Hope this helps.

Suteetat, are you using the 3P or 3Q? I noticed your system page lists the 3Q.

Red cedar, Pernambucco and Panzerholz measure well in accelerometer tests but all of the hardwoods offered for the Reed arms measure fairly close to each other. To my ears, the different hardwoods I have compared sound essentially the same. The Western Red Cedar measures the flattest of the woods tested. Does that make it the best choice? Depends what you like. The cedar does sound a little softer. The sound most likely comes from not only having a different dampening factor but cedar has less torsional rigidity. In some systems, that would work fine. I personally think the hardwoods deliver more of what is in the grooves. The other factor to consider is effective mass. If you need a low efective mass arm, the cedar could be your perfect choice.

Aluminum armwands color the sound and IMHO, are a poor choice for an armwand. The aluminum tubing is a good conduit of the vibrations from the cart and the noises from the plinth/armboard mount. You have a super highway there. Of course there are different types of aluminum but most ring like a bell without prodigious amounts of dampening or other forms of regulating energy transfers. We have enough Band-Aids in our hobby. Why not do it right in the first place?

I have heard several other armwand materials and so far, wood rules, at least until we can find a 12" long cactus needle...

Armboard material is a subject for a book, or at least a full chapter in the book of audio. The big question is, what is the armboard connected to? How toxic is the mount? By that I mean how contaminated is the armboard mount with outside and internal vibrations? Aluminum can be tolerable if it is mounted to a "clean" surface but one can do better. If the mounting surface is noisy (toxic) then metal would not be my first choice. If the mounting surface is clean, then a good metal is stainless steel. Bronze and gun metal are also quite good and depending on other factors, could be excellent. For most applications, a medium hard wood is difficult to beat. Panzerholz could very well be the best overall choice for most real world situations. There are several other great choices that most would be surprised at hearing, again depending on to what it is mounted. Back to the salt mines for me.

Sean is right, the base of the Reed is stainless steel.

Sorry to those that have ordered the new 3P Reed. If I had not insisted on a couple of serious changes to the prototype you all would have had your arms by now. Credit to Vidmantas. He fought me for a while but went ahead and humored me. He had to rewrite the programs for the CNC machines. An involved process to say the least when you add in all the testing. I received the first five production arms last week. To sum it up, the wait was and will be worth it for future owners. Listening to one right now and I could not be happier.

Hi John,
No, I did not receive any forwarded email from you. Sorry. You can reach me
at xactaudio@gmail.com or 208-860-9559
Hope this is not against the rules...