If I have to trim the upper level of the plinth the arm will go on the Scheu. That's fine too really.
Questions Regarding Installing a Wheaton Triplanar On A SOTA Cosmos
As luck would have it I recently acquired a Wheaton Triplanar VII U2, and am waiting on it being shipped. So at this point I am trying to decide what the most favorable table to mount it on, and what arm gets replaced. I have a SOTA Cosmos Eclipse with a SME V on it, and that would be my preferred place to install it. The only thing is this Triplanar has the arm cable extending out the back of the arm pillar instead of routed out the bottom of it. I have to assume the cable is going to have to be routed on top of the arm board and then over the edge into the body of the Cosmos. Not wild about that but do not see any other options other than drilling a 1/4 hole and routing the cable through it. Anyone have any experiences to share if they have installed it on a SOTA table?
My second alternative is to put the arm on my Scheu in place of a Dynavector DV505 I have. That is certainly a straightforward option, with no issues to be solved. However, I have never been fond of the SME V on the SOTA, so this would be my first choice.
Showing 7 responses by neonknight
That is a very good question Jim. I have just a handful of cartridges I can work with. The second arm on the Scheu is a Schroder CB-1L in ebony and I will use either a Transfiguration Audio Proteus or an Ortofon Verismo. Both cartridges sound nice on that arm. I will probably leave the Proteus on it. My third cartridge is an Audio Tekne MC-6310, which might go on the SME V which is on the SOTA. So the Verismo goes on the Wheaton. I have a Kiseki Blackheart Gen 1 that I currently have on the SME V and it sounds quite nice there. It will go to the sidelines, as well as a restored Ortofon MC2000 I have. |
@mijostyn I have a Schroder CB-1L with ebony wand on my Scheu table. I love the performance of the arm, and despise it's adjustment settings. It is criminal how primitive the counterweight setting, VTA, and antiskate adjustments are. I loathe installing a cartridge on it. |
Well back to our regular programming. Since I have a spare arm board for the SOTA and the Scheu I figured I would trial a temporary installation. I started laying out the SOTA option, and even at the eyeballing stage it can be seen that the rear stub of the arm is too long to clear the right corner of the table. Not only do you have to space the arm board or arm up, the dustcover is going to have to be removed. Not an option I wanted to pursue. Next up came the Scheu, and so I pulled the Dynavector off. I roughed the angle of the board in, placed the arm on the back of board and held it in place with a generous application of strong double sided tape. It took a bit of maneuvering to get the right angle for the arm, and this gives me a reference when the permanent arm board shows up so I can lay it out for a drilling pattern. Made fine adjustments with the board to obtain correct spindle to pivot numbers and we cinched down the bolt.
As long as I was this far, I decided to put a cartridge on it and see if the offset between the arm board and the top of the platter was too great, or if I would have to find a way to raise the arm board. Put on an Audio Tekne MC6310 and adjusted VTA to find I was in the center of the range. At this point I can set VTF as that only takes a minute. Now with minimal antiskate dialed in I can at least spin a donor album and make sure both channels are playing. Which I did, and even without finishing the alignment it sounded surprisingly good. So I ran some errands and when I came back in the afternoon, I aligned the cartridge and decided to spin a couple of good albums. The performance is quite nice, its rich and vibrant without any significant loss of detail. Definite improvement over my Dynavector, so this is where I am going to use it. The only downside is I now have no way to play my Ortofon MC2000's. I know a Scheu dealer in Canada and I reached out to see if he had any extra black arm boards. No blank ones, but there was one with a small hole drilled towards the back and in the center axis of the board, probably in the 30 mm range. Probably for an older Rega, Origin Live, or something like that. I can cover that up with the base flange of the Triplanar and then drill the bolt pattern for a permanent mount. So once I get that I will complete the permanent installation. But for now I can listen to it, and its a gem. |
@lewm The arm effective mass is 11 grams, which is higher than I feel comfortable running the cartridge at. I never could find a vertical effective mass for the vestigial arm on the Dynavector, but I always ran the lightest head shells I could find. In the end I used a Denon that weighed 5.6 grams. |
I do like the Triplanar arm. For an arm that has so much adjustability I don’t see how to adjust the cue lever bar. This one wants to drift a bit on set down and pick up. From searches on the net this seems to be an issue others have had. With the only fixes seem kind of janky. Wish there was a way to level that rod. |