Silver v Copper wire phono cable

@rauliruegas , what about his system requires silver tonearm wire?

Anybody interested in what tonearm the OP is getting?

@jw944ts , What are you getting? Hopefully good solid bearings this time? If so the tonearm will make much more of a difference than the wire. The one you have is....problematic to say the least. A Kuzma 4 Point nine would be nice or a Reed 2G if the Oracle can take the weight. A Schroder CB would be perrrrfect. I use one a Sota. An SME if you can get one.

@rauliruegas , that is a bit different but, I get your point.

@jw944ts , The 3P is the glamourous arm but the 2G is a better design. It has a much better bearing topology. The problem for you is going to be the weight. Your suspension can only take so much mass back there. With the VTA gauge it might be too heavy. You best check the specs of your turntable carefully before you jump. I would call Oracle and make sure they are compatible. 

@jw944ts , Sure. It would help if you print a good picture of both arms before you continue. It would also help if you watched this first. If you go to the Reed site if you click on the pictures you will blow ups which show the bearing assemblies nicely. It would also help if you watch this excellent primer on tonearm and turntable design.

@jw944ts , Lets start with the Reed 3P. This is a brilliant design. It not only gives you adjustable VTA on the fly but also adjustable Azimuth on the fly and I think it is the only arm ever to do this. These would be cool features to have but unfortunately they had to sacrifice some basic design issues to do it. It seems if you want to come up with something "different" you have to violate design principles that have been known for decades. For a long time most arms were based on the SME 3009 and for a reason. It was the first arm that was distinctly headed in the right direction. It has issues but it was "the" pivoted arm to have for a very long time.  OK, back to the 3P. That thing at the back that looks like an egg we shall call the bearing housing. I/2 way down the egg to the front of the arm is a ledge. Below the ledge the egg is twice as thick. just above that ledge you see a tab that comes off the arm with what looks like a vertical screw. That is a needle bearing and you can see a hardened cup in the ledge. That is the female side of the bearing. There is an identical bearing on the other side of the arm. Together these form the vertical bearing of the arm. It's level with the horizontal axis of the arm. Now in your head imagine a line that connects the center of the cartridge to the center of mass of the counterweight just below it's midpoint. The vertical bearing is far above that line. This is a stable balance arm. If you balance it so that it floats perfectly horizontal and you were to lift it up an inch and let go, it will oscillate up and down and finally come to rest back at horizontal. As the tonearm goes up the tracking force increases until the arm changes direction. As the arm goes down tracking force decreases until the arm changes direction. If you think about it this is a really bad deal for tracking records that are not perfectly flat. This is the arm that gets launched as it hits a warp big enough. The best way around this is vacuum clamping. A neutral balanced arm tracks better warps and all. The other problem with a bearing geometry like this is the problem of warp wow. As the tonearm rises over a warp the groove velocity increases as the effective length of the tonearm decreases relative to the plane of the record. As the tonearm travels down the warp it lengthens again slowing the speed down. As the vertical bearing rises above the record this worsens increasing " warp wow"  The best you can ask for is bearings that are in the plane of the record minimising the problem. So, by virtue of it's design the 3P is going to have more difficulty following warped records and more  warp wow than designs that do not sacrifice this for trick things like adjustable Azimuth on the fly. 

Now lets go to the 2G. The 2G's bearing housing is quite different. Again it has two needle bearings for the vertical bearing. The female cups are under the housing mounted on a horizontal platform behind the tonearm rest platform. Just about at the level of the record. If you draw a line through the middle of the cartridge to the center of mass of the counterbalance this line will transect the vertical bearing. This is a neutral balance arm. If you balance it horizontal then pick it up 1 inch and let it go it just stays there. VTF does not change with elevation.

No bouncing up and down, no changing VTF. This is an arm that is much better over warps. It has superior tracking and less warp wow.  It does not have adjustable azimuth on the fly. The vast majority of us set it and forget it. We may do it once every 5 years when switching to a new cartridge. Some people are switching cartridges every other side. They love this and removable head shells but they give up ultimate performance for that flexibility. Both arms will work on the SME. 

If you were to AB both arms on SMEs with the same cartridge I seriously doubt any of us could hear a difference. On a less than flat record some of us might be able to hear a difference on certain types of material. 

When I choose equipment I am after the ultimate performance. To sacrifice basic principles the benefit has to be great and IMHO adjustable azimuth on the fly is not worth it. 

Happy Thanksgiving! 

@jw944ts , I have not owned either arm although I did consider the 2G for a while. In the end I preferred the design of the Schroder CB. Asking what a piece of equipment sounds like without really knowing that person well is dangerous. You really can't make anything out of it. We can talk about design aspects and what works better. Tonearms are not supposed to sound like anything. It's job is to hold the cartridge in rigidly in position and allow movement only it two directions. It is the cartridge that "sounds." 

@dover , It is attraction not repulsion with that are sort of like the Schroder Reference arm but, you are right it is not a solid connection and it will have a resonance point. 

It is useless to talk about they way things sound. There is way too much variation involved for a multitude of reasons. 

From a purely design perspective the 2G is a better are. I am not saying the 3P is a bad arm but it does violate several aspects of tonearm design including the one Dover just mentioned. 

@jw944ts , My first Porsche was a 944 turbo. What a car.

The Oracle is very much a descendent of the AR XA as is my Sota. You are right 9 inch arms only. But there is one issue you have to be really careful with. Arms with VTA towers weight more and Reeds may weight more than your suspension can take. You have to look for that spec or call Oracle to check and compare with the arm's total weight including the cartridge. Get back to me with that data and we can discuss it. I have always seen that table with SMEs installed and the SME is a much lighter arm than either Reed.

@jw944ts , well there you go. I guess that settles that issue. Looks good there also.

I wonder why the 2G and not the 3P?

@pindac , interesting. I have not analyzed that from a mechanical perspective. Both metals are very ductile and malleable. Wires of similar gauge will be just as flexible. Both will strain harden but not to a degree that would cause failure in this application. Both would break just as easily. I would think strength and flexibility would depend more on the material used for insulation. As an example Etymotic ear phones have Kevlar strands in the insulation. You can hang yourself with them before they will break. I managed to do it anyway, a long story. Silver is a slightly better conductor but in reality this means very little. Both will tarnish. 

In Short, the best tonearm wire should be strong and very flexible. This depends more on gauge and the mechanical properties of the insulation. The highest gauge you can get away with maintaining reasonable strength is the way to go. As for which conductor to use? I would be willing to bet $1000 that if I did blind AB testing on a group of audiophiles none of them would be reliably able to identify the conductor. It is a shame that a group of us do not get together to perform tests like these. They do not get done because the media does not want to piss of 90% of it's advertisers and a wealthy audiophile has not come along to underwrite a group such as this. 

As if it means anything, I had a choice of wire with Schroder tonearm. I chose copper. I thought the silver was a waste of money.  

@bpoletti , if any of us can hear a 3mB difference in volume I am a monkey's uncle. There is absolutely no frequency response change between silver and copper wire in the audio band. So, I am going to have to agree with lewm on this one. 

@dover, what I said is exactly true. I did not say which one was more or less ductile and malleable and in the context of wire the distinction is close to being meaningless. It is extremely easy to draw both metals into wire. In actuality either metal can be more or less ductile depending on the alloy. As pure metals silver is more ductile than copper but if you look at a chart of metals both are near the top. The only one better than silver is gold. I think copper is fourth on the list. Try making wire out of titanium. 

@terry9 , I think maybe dover has a prostate problem:)