To the Old School Tonearm Guys are the Newer very expensive Tonearms as Good as Claimed?

more superior sonically in every aspect over the older well regarded Tonearms of the past like Sme, Audio Technica, Empire, Stax, Jelco, Thorens, Emt, Decca, Ortofon, Stax, Saec, Sumiko, Micro, FR, Rega, Technics etc

Don't forget the Stogi Reference...

BTW the cartridge can make a big difference. A crappy cartridge can make the best arm bad.

The technical argument is like stating that old lathes are not

as good as the new CNN lathes. But the work done is dependant

from the (master) mechanics. My Sumiko 800 is designed by

engineer  Fletcher but each of the 150 parts are hand made on

a lathe by the master mechanics Demian Davidson. Breuer also

make his arms by himself. J.Carr and Ikeda both still  use the old

Ikeda's master machinist. We also know that those ''tubed''

cantilevers from the 80is are made with laser. But despite the

possible ''evolution'' of lasers we don't see such cantilevers any

more.

If one compare, say, Micro Max 282 with whatever new tonearm

one would not conclude that the technology is more advanced

at present.

i

The availability on eBay is some indication for the succes of

whatever item. One can find TW 10.5 each time one looks at

 the German site ''audio-markt'' . This presuppose owners

who are willing to part from this tonearm.

This should count as one less from those ''many'' you mentioned.

@vinny55 , the job of old and new tonearms is not to ''sound''

but to allow given  cartridge to sound at its best.