Phantom Supreme to 4Point-14?

Nah. She’s oblivious to the big speakers, maybe because we’ve been married 45 years and I’ve had speakers of similar size, if not even bigger and more ugly (two pairs of KLH 9s) since before we met. 

Nandric, I am feeling very old.  I will tell my wife to offer you the L07D upon my expiration. I am not sure what is the bone of contention regarding vintage and Japanese turntables, but for what it's worth, I bought all my vintage Japanese TTs here in the good old USA (not always good and certainly not old by Japanese or European standards).  The L07D came from a guy in Queens, a borough of NYC.  The NOS Technics SP10 Mk3 was sniffed out by a non-audiophile but collector friend of mine in Miami, FL.  The owner had owned it for many decades, sitting in its box in his closet.  It took quite a bit of haggling to get it from him at a reasonable price. I cannot even recall where I found the Victor TT101, but it took 2 years and the serendipitous discovery of JP Jones and his expertise to get it running properly.  Since then, it's been totally reliable. The Denon DP80 came from a fairly well known and well regarded dealer in CA, somewhere.  The DP80 needed a new chip, probably owing to the fact it is a 100V unit that was run at 120V in CA.  I found the "unobtainable" chip on Alibaba.

For what it's worth, my prodigal son in Tokyo could not care less about my hobbies or audio per se.  He is a complete ascetic. Generally, he prefers not to intervene to help me purchase items in Japan, but during our most recent visit, he caved in and spoke on my behalf, in Japanese, to a Yokohama-based company to facilitate a purchase.  (Viv Float tonearm.) Eleven years ago, he reluctantly helped me buy a Koetsu Urushi in Akihabara, the electronics mecca of Tokyo, but that's about it.  I love him dearly, regardless.

I would say Europe, especially Germany in the guise of "West Germany", recovered more rapidly from WW2 devastation than did Japan.  As late as the late 1950s or early 1960s, the slogan "Made in Japan" was a synonym for poor quality in the USA.  And there was no market here for Japanese cars until the late 60s. This, in my opinion, was due to a racist sentiment here, at that time.

I have to retract my sentiments about Hifido, to a degree.  I once did successfully purchase a turntable from them, Pioneer Exclusive P3.  That purchase was carried out on my behalf by a guy who lived in Tokyo. Then he subsequently asked me if I minded if he kept the tt for himself, to which I agreed.  So I never did get to own a P3, but I've got enough TTs to keep me busy anyway.

Wrm, having visited a branch of Hifido during a recent visit to Tokyo, I’m wondering how they ever do business. Anything of real interest in that shop was marked as being under negotiation, therefore not for sale. How long can it take to “negotiate “? Same goes for their website.

I concur, Thom Mackris is one of the best in the business. He’ll give you an honest opinion, but I still say the answer to your question is cartridge dependent.

Whether any or all of the tonearms on your list qualify as an upgrade is such a difficult question to answer, especially since the cartridge/tonearm mating is such a critical factor. I've got 5 turntables up and running with 5 different tonearms. I often move cartridges around among those tonearms, and I can testify from first hand experience that the tonearm can change the personality of a cartridge, and vice-versa.  Also, on that list, the LT has to be regarded as a different animal, in principle.  Not that I have ever heard one.

Kuzma’s rationale for the very high effective mass of the Safir essentially boils down to the notion that any high end modern TT will be sufficiently isolated from very low frequency disturbances, like footfalls, by its isolation mechanisms. Therefore the low resonant frequency that results from such a high effective mass is not a problem. IOW, violate the 8 to 12 Hz rule for resonance at your leisure. I’m not averse to his thesis. But I am averse to the cost of the Safir, based on my research into the cost of sapphire tubes like the one used in the Safir. You can buy one for less than $50.

But once one admits that 92 degrees is not necessarily optimal, then it becomes a matter of adjusting SRA to please yourself.  The fussiness of doing that would detract from my listening pleasure much more than does the possibility that each LP is not sounding its absolute best at my chosen fixed VTA.  I usually choose an LP of average thickness, adjust for that LP, and then forgeddaboudit.  If there was something "off" about SQ on a particular LP, I suppose I would play with VTA among other parameters in order to cure a perceived problem.

FWIW. the Holy Grail for SRA is 92 degrees (an angle), not 92%. This was an estimate of the angle made by the cutter head and based on the notion that one wants SRA to exactly replicate the angle of the cutter head when playing an LP. Some gurus have disputed the notion that all studios used 92 degrees at all times. Others have suggested that the optimal SRA would also be slightly different for different stylus shapes. I DO require easy VTA adjustment, but I don’t get caught up in the 92 degree angle worship. I don’t adjust VTA for each LP. And yet, I think I am a good person nevertheless. There’s too many reasons why 92 degrees might not actually be optimal, and some LPs just don’t sound as good as other LPs no matter what you do.  "Physics" doesn't demand bupkis because it does not give a darn about our fetishes.

Never bothered me a bit.

Mijo just wants someone, anyone, to live out his dream of owning a Schroeder LT. Yes, a 12 inch TP will be different from a 9 inch TP; its effective length will be 12 inches. The possible sonic differences with any particular cartridge are possible to predict in advance.

Thanks, I hadn’t been aware of that oddity about the 11" Kuzma. I guess I should have been alerted to it because you did mention the mounting distance in an earlier post. But if the distance from the pivot to the spindle (aka "mounting distance") is only 212mm, how does it end up being 11" in effective length? I will have to look at some photos.

OK, I did find photos.  When you quote mounting distance, are you referring to the necessary room needed to clear the very large diameter VTA tower, which is larger than those used by Triplanar or Reed?  So in your parlance, the mounting distance is not equal to the pivot to spindle distance, in that case.

FWIW, so far as I know, the SP10 mk3 and the SP10R have identical relationships between the platter location and that of the surrounding rectangular escutcheon, and I had no problem mounting a 10.5 inch Reed tonearm on my mk3. So I don’t know why you think the 11 inch Kuzma would not work.