New 55,000 Euro tonearm

A $407 tonearm, what's the big deal?  Oh, Euros, not Yen.  Nevermind.  That arm is made for their quarter million dollar table, so it doesn't seem THAT out of line.  I hope a prospective buyer can find a way to stabilize the table enough to work in their 350 foot yacht, particularly if it is a Russian yacht trying to outrun US and European authorities.

SAT has been around for a while. IMHO it is overrated and overpriced. I ask myself if I had unlimited funds would I buy it? The Answer is absolutely not. I would buy a Dohmann Helix and put two Schroder LTs on it. 

Using only the photos attached to the review, it seems that neither the pivot nor the counterweight lie in the plane of the LP surface. Nor is the CW obviously decoupled from the pivot. Those are all commonly accepted good practices observed by new modern tonearms, although I’ll be the first to admit that there are other great tonearms, especially vintage ones, that also don’t conform to those design criteria..

Dear @mijostyn  : Me neither and @rsf507  as mijostyn posted that design has at least 11 years now so it's " new " for you but no for all of us.

Even there is a dedicated SAT thread in this forum.

 

Regrads and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,

R.

I don’t know what can be gleaned from the specific design, but, I don’t think the location of the pivot and counterweight is an issue, even from a theoretical perspective.  The supposed “ideal” is neutral balance, which is the center of gravity being in line with the pivot; it is not the case that the pivot or the counterweight or the center of gravity having to be in line with the record surface.  I don’t know of many arms where the pivot is at the height of the record.  Arms where the counterweight is substantially lower than the pivot are common, particularly with unipivot arms, because this is inherently stable.  But stable configurations resist movement away from the stable balance position which means increased tracking force when riding up a warp and decreased force riding down.

I have not heard the arm, but it would have to perform miracles to justify its price, in my opinion.  For someone with much better finances, I can see it being a reasonable purchase with far less of a holy payback.

Quotes from the link:

Gomez's raison d'etre is fierce: "You will never find magic ingredients or bullshit in my designs. I cannot make magic, only the best of what science, technology, and my imagination have to offer today."

&

Gomez firmly believes that pickup arms should be designed and manufactured as precision measuring instruments, not as tuned musical instruments, which is, unfortunately, a common practice today.

My observations on the attitude:

An excessively aggressive approach of bullying and belittling the competition to match the excessive prices he demands.

I have nothing against precision engineering, if anything, it is welcome and a most powerful tool to build audio equipment. However, to build something that is built to SOUND GOOD, and not just to MEASURE GOOD... would require more humility and a little more open mind, and learn from those low-lie music instrument makers.

I do not want to give him free advice, so no comment on what could be improved would he deem to present himself as a decent human being.

HINT: who of those lowly music instrument-copying arm builders tunes his tonearm with so badly OUT OF FRIGGIN TUNE RESONANT FREQUENCIES as this arm?!!!

No more hints, this alone should be more than enough...

BTW the arm is probably a very high level one, but for this money one could do better than feeding peacokcks and roosters.....  I always look at who I am supporting when making a purchase. If you are an unpleasant human being, even with a good product I'm not going to support you. On the bright side he probably sad those things to attract the appropriate clientelle, for whom such attitude is a powerful magnet....

 

@realworldaudio  the statements you quoted don't seem to justify your argument. Excessive aggression and bullying? That's not what most people would take away from those statements. 

Deciding whether or not to buy the 55,000 Euro SAT CF1-09 tonearm when you buy the 150,000 Euro SAT XD1 turntable....the epitome of First World Problems.

Not that I have experienced that tonearm or will ever be able to hear it in my system.

 

But as I understand it it one of its job is to isolate and damping the vibrations from reaching the cartridge and therefore the cartridge will pick up the wanted vibrations in the grove and not vibrations that is coming elsewhere.

 

I recently bought a funk Houdini. It is a damper/isolation thing that is mounted between the cartridge AND the tonearm. That is 6 mm thick 

It is damping/isolating the last amount of vibrations and resonance that the tone arm are not able to handle. (Depending on the tone arm there is more or less of those when all tone arms have different resonance properties)

 

The funk houdini remove the relationship/matching for vibrations/"resonances" between cartridge and tone arm (yes there is also OTHER things to match as effective tonearm mass and cartridge compliance). And in great extent remove the need for high dollar tone arms when their better vibration/"resonances" control is of limited usefulness when it is sitting on the other side of the damper/isolation device seen from the cartridge perspective.

 

In other words if we mount the funk houdini then most of the sonic improvement that a multi dollar tone arm can contribute in sonic improvement is more or less wasted.

Or with a good tonearm and funk Houdini the sonic improvement can/will be as good as a multi dollar tone arm.

 

When houdini is 6mm thick I just mounted it and then I elevated with micrometer pression (easy SRA) the tone arm the same. And realigned the cartridge.

So the only change i did in my system were mounting the houdini.

 

How does it sound then?

The easiest change that I picked up and the most obvious one were that the increased bass level! The details were of course still there but it were louder so you easier could hear them.. that were a very welcome addition when my experience is that LP has not much of a bottom end especially older recordings. As I see it, that the primary goal is to retrieve as much as possible from the groove and later on in the signal path we can adjust it sonically to our personal preference.

It were the first time that I got the reaction to reach for the remote control to lower the bass on the DSP preset. But I didn't when i wanted to hear clearly all the sonic differences by only changing one thing for comparison.

But it felt for the first time that it were a little bit to much bass on the LP.. And I never would think that I would say that sentence for the vinyl format.. (I should say as standard/normally I use a increased bass bost with my DSP so there is space for lowering that bass boost that was why I tried to reach for the remote..)

 

Then we have seperation/details/dept/contour and so on. I thought that all other aspects also get better but it is smaller changes and this was not and can't be a fast AB comparison and the re-alignment of the cartridge will never be 100% the same even if you try. It were improvements but how much or if any.. it is harder to tell.

 

Anyway I had bought the funk houdini second hand and I messaged the seller my findings and he confirmed them but with much stronger wording than I used.

 

Maybe someone else find it interesting and as I don't have a pile of cash to throw on a tone arm. And are able to raise the current one with 6 mm. Then the funk houdini is a cheap alternative that might yield more or less the same performance (or maybe even better performance nobody knows)!

 

I guess Mikey's already bought his.

And some oligarchs who still have a bit of disposable.

SAT is too much bling for me.  With that amount of bling I seriously question if the designer is really wedded only to good engineering.  He talks the talk.

 

@optimize    If you are getting extra bass from LPs, your funk Houdini (nearly the right name) is probably just adding resonance (NOT subtracting it as you say).  You are not getting more of what's in the groove; the resonance is just amplifying it.  Take it off, bin it and get back to listening to the music.

bahhh, to me it's just a lot of bullshit!

will never listen to such stratospheric items, so I have no opinion ...BUT, there must always be a significant degree of diminishing returns and simple BLING at those $$ levels.....

Hold on fella @larryi. The position of the counter weight in relation to the pivot and cartridge determine the way the tonearm balances. There are two types of balance, stable balance and neutral balance. A stable balance arm is much easier to make. If you balance a stable balance arm so that it floats horizontally, lift it an inch or two, let go and it will swing up and down until it finds its stable balance point. It will find the same balance point every time. If you do this to a neutral balance arm it will stay exactly where you let go where ever you let go. What this means in the real world is that a neutral balance arm maintains exactly the same VTF regardless of it's height whereas a stable balance arm increases VTF an the way and decreases it on the way down. Which arm do you think tracks warps better? Which arm maintains VTF regardless of record thickness. Which arm would you rather have. Granted, it all records were perfectly flat and of the same thickness it would not matter. Now look at a collection of the best arms out there, The SME V, Kuzma 4 points, Schroder CB, Tri Planar, and the Reed 2G and 5T. 

I agree, stable balance IS determined by the position of the counterweight (more accurately the center of gravity) and the pivot—neutral balance is where the  center of gravity is one the same horizontal plane of the pivot.  The other poster said that the counterweight and pivot should be on the same level as the stylus playing the record, that is what I disagreed with.  Looking at the SAT arm it appears that the center of gravity is aligned with the pivot, and because the head shell is slightly raised relative to the arm stem, that would also mean that the cartridge weight is distributed well above and below the center of gravity of the arm.  By all appearances this IS a neutral balance arm.

 

Curious how it might compare to the Kuzma Safir 9 at only $22,000

https://www.kuzma.si/safir-9.html

i ordered the Primary Control FCL tone arm in January from the Netherlands, and should receive it next week. this arm uses field coil loading for the bearing.

https://www.primarycontrol.nl/Field_Coil_Loaded_Unipivot_Tonearm.html

a friend who also has the big SAT tone arm on hand being discussed here to compare directly, prefers the FCL. not cheap; the FCL arm has a US Retail of over $30k. that same friend also prefers the Durand Tosca to the big SAT. i use 2 of the Tosca’s in my system. it’s priced around $15k USD.

just received a field coil cartridge, the DaVa Reference (from Lithuania), which i’m starting to explore. the DaVa is not cheap but will not break the bank.....at around 6k Euro's plus the power supply which as a field coil it needs. ordered that in early January.

That is a very interesting arm Mike.  It appears to be a much more sophisticated version of magnetic stabilization and damping than Graham’s use of permanent magnets.  Please do continue to keep us apprised on the arm and the field coil cartridge.  I have heard a couple of such cartridges and both were very dynamic sounding.

Typical.

 

If you have not heard it, used it or examined it it person, then all you are doing is posting an uninformed opinion.

 

 

Just for the record, Larry, I did not use the word ”should” in reference to the desired location of the pivot and CW to the LP surface. I only said, or intended to say, that those are two theoretical goals of a modern design. I probably should have further qualified my statement with the words “for some”. I agree there are not many tonearms that achieve both goals. I think there is less controversy around the idea that the center of mass of the CW ought to lie in the plane of the LP surface. Decoupling of the CW mass from the pivot is good too. The late Herb Papier, the original designer and maker of the Triplanar and a very dedicated audiophile, told me that he thought the major improvement he made to the design of the TP after it was finalized and in production was to decouple the CW.

@clearthinker wrote:

@optimize If you are getting extra bass from LPs, your funk Houdini (nearly the right name) is probably just adding resonance (NOT subtracting it as you say). You are not getting more of what's in the groove; the resonance is just amplifying it. Take it off, bin it and get back to listening to the music.

OK I started to think where did you get that info and how can you get to that conclusion that I should just "bin it"...

 

So according to you and your expertise (I regard you as a expert, when you're able to diagnose what my stylus does in the grove and giving advice to throw things in the bin when you know what is god or not.)

 

Because you reacted to one conclusion i did:

"If you are getting extra bass from LPs"

OK this is not my primary language and I can't paint a nice picture for you that you would like with words.

I do not have that ability to describe nuance like that. As the journalists in the magazines below because it's their job to write a lot of fluffy words that I almost don't understand..

 

But let us go back to the topic the SAT cf1-09:

the absolute sound 

Wrote:

The same for the piano bass line, which simply appeared to go even deeper than I had experienced before.

And:

On a nifty Storyville LP called The Target the marvelous Danish bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen’s bass came oozing into the room with sumptuous harmonic overtones. Then there was KC and the Sunshine band’s rendition of “That’s the Way (I Like It), on the new Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab’s silver label. The combination of the unprecedented alacrity of the SAT tonearm coupled with sledgehammer bass that came juddering into my room was nothing less than intoxicating. Yeah, baby!

I guess you like that color full text above..

 

Another test:

In stereophile

the album has stupendous, deep, powerful bass

Another example:

The combo of original SAT and Ortofon MC Century produced among the best reproductions of this 1987 recording I've heard, especially its bass power and control. I swapped in the new SAT LM-09, and played and recorded the track again.

(Above is apparently another SAT model in their range but the objective is to see if a better tonearms may or may not give better/more bass.)

 

So in your expertise if anyone happened to own this tone arm in question: SAT cf1-09

Owners of SAT cf1-09 should "bin it" in your logic. 

When it apparently have the ability to "getting extra bass".

It is good to know that we have a humble expert here that we can lean on without owning and living with a houdini or SAT cf1-09 I presume. 

This might just be out of reach.

So $58,000 for the arm. $75,000-$100,000 for a turntable. $10,000-$15,000 for a cartridge. A few thousand for cables. $10,000-$20,000 for a pre-preamp. A few thousand more for cables.

And I’m still not ready to play a $30 record.

Hmmm.

 

If you balance a stable balance arm so that it floats horizontally, lift it an inch or two, let go and it will swing up and down until it finds its stable balance point. It will find the same balance point every time. If you do this to a neutral balance arm it will stay exactly where you let go where ever you let go. 

So if a neutral balance arm gets raised by a record warp it never comes down.

Oh, wait, it has a 10 gram cartridge on the end.

And 1-2gm tracking force.

There's no such thing as neutral balance, they all come down.

Which arm do you think tracks warps better? 

How often do you play warped records ?

I thought you had a vacuum Sota - does it not work on warped records ?

I have no problem tracking warped records on any of my arms, including the Naim Aro with its low slung counterweight.

Deciding whether or not to buy the 55,000 Euro SAT CF1-09 tonearm when you buy the 150,000 Euro SAT XD1 turntable....the epitome of First World Problems.

You might be better off finding a forum for Technics 1200 turntables, the epitome of third world problems.

@optimize 

It is good to know that we have a humble expert here that we can lean on without owning and living with a houdini or SAT cf1-09 I presume. 

We have many posters here on audiogon who are experts on products they have never heard.

They usually resort to scientific arguments - but of course they forget that scientific research and discovery should include both theory and practise (testing). I call it the new science, in the old days they would have called it speculation or in Kiwi parlance - a brain fart.

Having researched further the Houdini cartridge decoupler and the principles behind their arm, I learn that their idea is to decouple the cartridge from the arm by securing it to the arm with a non-rigid fixing.

This is just about the most stupid idea ever conceived in the history of recorded sound.  The principle of sound reproduction via LPs is that the stylus is fixed rigidly in the arm which is only allowed movement in lateral and vertical planes, i.e. no twisting or turning.

The reason for this is plain.  If the stylus is allowed to move whilst it is tracing the signal recorded in the groove (other than movement induced by the groove's modulations), distortion will be introduced, i.e. signals other than those recorded in the groove.  Movement of as little as one micron will introduce distortion.

Most reputable designers of tonearms have gone to great lengths to ensure a rigid cartridge fixing and bearings with minimum slack, only for Houdini to magic it all away.

@optimize     non-rigid cartridge fixings also introduce unwanted resonance into the signal.

@optimize 

You are absolutely correct - the Houdini attempts to fix a problem by adding another. You can't measure the groove unless the cartridge is mounted rigidly. It's a bandaid. However when I owned an audio shop I found that many audiophiles like a mushy homogenous sound - not too challenging - its driven by needs other than audio ( high fidelity ).

 

Bear in mind I have Zero Interest in this Tonearm, I do not aspire to going down this route to achieve the design or manufacture procedures used for this product.

Following sharing the Link to the SAT CF 109, only with the intention of showing the attached price tag.

I have received the following from an individual who I trust, and has claimed to have had a direct communication with Leif Johannson and quoted something that is in line with a conversation that took place quite recently.

Leif Johannson, chief developer at Ortofon, also uses a SAT tonearm when developing his top systems. In Munich he told me that with the SAT he would hear the "faults" of the cartridges and not the tonearm, which is very important for the development and tuning of his cartridges.
 

 

while counting angels on heads of pins has it’s advantages, musical expression is a bit more complicated than that. nothing wrong with being a great tool for investigation, but does it satisfy? not saying it does not, although i get mixed feedback on that part.

not lived with it myself, so i cannot say.

 

In Munich he told me that with the SAT he would hear the "faults" of the cartridges and not the tonearm, which is very important for the development and tuning of his cartridges.

To comment on the observable design and construction of a tonearm without necessarily speculating on its putative sonic character is no sin. If it is, we cannot have a conversation, since there are very few products, let alone tonearms we’ve all heard. And even in the case where we do share listening experience, we are separated by having done the listening in dissimilar systems . I only object to quips that are based on very high cost.

Anyway the Funk gizmo has naught to do with a $55K tonearm.

I can bet you money that the first and second runs are already sold out and the waiting list is longer than a Chick-Filet line. 
Would I try it if I had the dough to be able to afford a $58,000 tonearm? I honestly don’t know. I don’t know how it feels to have that kind of money. Maybe to some people in the third world, what I spent on speaker cables is as obscene. 

I can bet you money that the first and second runs are already sold out and the waiting list is longer than a Chick-Filet line. 

Case in point - when Touraj Moghaddam launched the Vertere tonearm at US$35000 many years ago, he debuted it at the Hong Kong Hifi show and left the show with confirmed orders for at least 30 units.

 

 

These sorts of products have a very important function--they make purchases below their price seem more sane.  If you point to a $55,000 tonearm, your own purchase of a $5,500 seems more reasonable, after all, it is only one tenth the price of the SAT arm.

Dear @mijostyn  : About your concern of neutral balance, it's ok in theory but there are other really critical tonearm design issues to really try helps to the cartridge job and yes as you and @dover  as tighter the cartridge/headshell mount as the better.

 

I think that the main target for a tonearm designer is not only that the cartridge be hold and  makes the cartridge tracking ridding in the best way but its intrinsecal relationship between these to analog items and I'm refering how to put at minimum all the vibrations developed by the cartridge/LP ridding that holds by the tonearm where those vibrations pass through as the feedback and own tonearm self develped vibrations.

 

That's for me is the must critical issue that affects in way different directions and in reality are what puts each one tonearm colorations in what we are listening.

 

Yes, bearing type and design is crucial too but we have to remember that arm/cartridge/LP/TT/plattform function not only as a transducer but live in a way imperfect audio analog world where even the " air " that surrounded can have effects in the final performance.

 

Put at minimum the developed vibrations for me is the name of the game.

 

Here, again, the SAT designer/manufacturer white papers on rigidity, vibrations and resonance:

 

 

The saphire Kuzma arm wand confirm what is my take about.

In the other side as you I'm not a fan of the tonearm unipivot designs a for the same good reasons ( several ) that you already know and in the link that Mike posted is precisely an unipivot design and we can read manufacturer statements with out any kind of measures/facts that confirm those statements.

No, I don't listen it never but:

 

• Torsional motion feedback control in real time
• No bearing chatter
• High torsional stability
• Non-friction magnetic anti-skating
• Ultra low resonance armwand

 

In real time could means or not that that kind of control happens  when is happening ?

an unipivot is unstable but here the manufacturer says " high tortional stability ". What really means that under play?

 

ultra low ressonance arm wand. Well the best tonearms said the same.

 

Anyway, this unipivot looks as something to experience but any one of you can be sure that what you will sound with are only a different kind of colorations. How much different? I don't know but those differences  have a intrinsecal relationship with which cartridge is mounted, the room/system resolution and certainly with the MUSIC/sound targets/priorities of the tonearm owners.

 

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,

R.

Dear friends : Please take a moment and think a little about those developed cartridge/tonearm/LP/TT circuit.

 

All generated non-grooves signal movements/vibrations can't be avoided at 100%, we could put at minimum in many ways as can be changing its frequency response where does less harm or through a well damped tonearm design or, or, or,.

 

Why cartridge designers cantilever choice material in its top designs is Boron or Diamond? well both materials have the higher Young Modulus than any other materials, those  kind of material that's critical for that cantilever cartridge role to at least try to put at minimum additional movements/vibrations by the cantilever it self.

 

Kuzma ruby choice material for its arm wand design was trying to take in count  how ruby behave with vibrations and feedback.

 

To my knowlege the best well damped tonearm design was designed using Boron trhough all its parts and especially at the arm wand and is a unique and the only tonearm manufactured with that material that is not easy to works with.

 

The SAT is rigid and well damped tonearm and I don't know if that new unipivot design arm in reality is well damped and rigid that's more important that that field coil bearing control. Even the designer talks of " low resonance arm wand " but no single word about vibrations or damping by the material blend of the tonearm.

We will see when @mikelavigne  could share his first hand experiences in his room/system.

 

R.

 

 

I forgot, that boron tonearm is the Technics EPA 100MK2. @mijostyn  and guess what? it's not a neutral design and it's a just neutral tonearm quality performance as till today no other tonearm design.

 

R.

The saphire Kuzma arm wand confirm what is my take about.

In the other side as you I'm not a fan of the tonearm unipivot designs....

Anyway, this unipivot looks as something to experience 

The Kuzma Safir is not a unipivot. 

Kuzma ruby choice material for its arm wand design was trying to take in count  how ruby behave with vibrations and feedback.

No - the Safir uses a sapphire arm tube.

@rauliruegas , Raul all those factors go into designing a good arm. Neutral balance is just one of them. But, there are solutions that make neutral balance less important like vacuum clamping. Neutral balance means nothing if the record is perfectly flat. Tight control over degrees of freedom and low resonance are more important as there is no way around these characteristics. This totally disqualifies unipivots and requires excellent preloaded bearings and a non-resonant arm tube and tonearm structure. The SAT arm certainly has those characteristics but there is another side to that conversation and that is mass. The SAT tonearm bearing structure is extremely heavy with excess inertia. A record can be made flat but it can not be made concentric and at least 50% of records are visibly out which means that little stylus has to start and stop that massive  bearing structure 33.33 times per minute. IMHO the SAT arm is a caricature of a tonearm. There are classier low mass ways of making a tonearm non resonant without adding so much mass. Example, Frank Schroder makes his bearing structures cylindrical. The only structure stiffer than a cylinder is a sphere. It is also very light if visibly unexciting. As for arm tubes, those conical tubes are sexy and a conical structure avoids having one loud resonance point but if the material of the arm tube does not resonate (well dampened) a conical structure is unnecessary. Those wispy arms of yore like the Infinity Black Widow need not apply. 

In Short, neutral balance is just one relatively minor aspect of tonearm design but to me it means the designer is paying close attention to detail and is likely to be concerned with all aspects of tonearm design.  

@dover , I'm no expert but I do believe Ruby is a form of sapphire.

@mijostyn 

I'm no expert but I do believe Ruby is a form of sapphire.

Sure, and diamond is a form of carbon, did you give your wife a lump of carbon for her engagement ring ?

@dover , no, I gave her charcoal.

In fairness to Mijostyn, both ruby and sapphire are corundum—crystalline aluminum oxide.

mijostyn,

Do you know the effective mass of the SAT arm?  Just looking at the pictures, I cannot even begin to guess whether it is a high mass arm or not.  Most of the mass around the pivot structure is in the non-moving part of the arm, and in any case, mass near the pivot does not affect effective mass as much as mass well beyond the pivot point.  The arm tube looks massive, but, it is a hollow carbon fiber tube of unknown thickness.  

Unfortunately, the SAT website has gone from reasonably informative to vague, feel-good crap.

Dear @dover  : First I was refering to the Netherlands new field coil unipivot not the Kuzma and in the other side ruby and  sapphire is the same material with same characteristics and only different color.

 

 So " touching " you are.

 

R.

ruby and  sapphire is the same material with same characteristics and only different color.

Sure - if you use Wikipaedia for your knowledge base.

I have seen several moving coil cartridges over the years with cantilevers made from sapphire tube.

I have never seen a cantilever with a ruby tube, only solid ruby.

Perhaps you need to look beyond wikipaedia for your knowledge base.

 

@larryi 

The actual bearing housing around the tube ( that rotates for horizontal motion ) is no bigger than my old Zeta tonearm which has a similar layout. The Zeta effective mass is only 14g - so as you point out the apparent bulkiness around the pivot point gives no indication of the effective mass.

However the lack of specifications on either their website or reviews is an issue for me. Two of my favourite cartridges are medium compliance and will not work optimally in a high mass arm. I would not buy the arm unless they can tell me the effective mass.

@dover, that is quite a caustic response. You might want to tone it down a little.  

@larryi , you are absolutely correct. Carbon fiber can be very misleading and tubes that look massive may not be massive at all. On the other hand thin walls resonate more so they have to be thick enough to prevent resonance. Metal is a lot easier to eyeball and the horizontal bearing carrier is pretty massive and still effects the inertia of the arm to a significant degree. I think if you compare it to say a Schroder CB you will not have any difficulty telling which arm has a lower effective mass and less inertia. Judging buy the cartridges I see used in the SAT arm it is at the higher end of the medium mass group. I agree that not publishing the effective mass is a problem.