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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.