Tonearm adjustments on the fly

I was wondering which tonearms allow for easy adjustments of VTA, SRA, azimuth, and such on the fly, i.e. without having to go through a lot of effort to make changes, like unscrewing a tonearm from the mount in order to raise the tonearm, etc.

@washline
The best of them is Reed, very few tonearms will give you azimuth on the fly option, vta on the fly is there too, so look for Reed 3p for example! The engineering of this tonearm is amazing, the build quality too. You can find some images of Reed 3p "12 in my old system here.

Regarding vintage tonearms with such options:

The best one (imo) is Lustre GST-801, but without azimuth on the fly (except for headshell with azimuth adjustment), however the VTA on the fly is there. Nice tonearms for a reasonable price nowadays!

Technics EPA-100 (and EPA-100 mk2) is another great tonearm with VTA on the fly.

For Fidelity-Research (and new Ikeda) tonearms we have to buy VTA on the fly base separately and this B60 (or IT-VTA-06) base alone costs more than the entire Lustre tonearm with VTA on the fly. Ikeda headshells will give you overhang and azimuth adjustment options.

How can you know that the Reed device is the "best of them"? I own both a Reed 2A and a Triplanar. The Reed is indeed a great tonearm, but the adjuster on the TP allows for finer tuning, not that I think fine tuning is so important. I fully realize that later models of the Reed, e.g., the 3P, may have a more precision adjuster, compared to my 2A. Later models of the TP (mine is already 25 years old) offer even finer adjusting than mine.

There is a fine tuning VTA adjuster on the Reed 3P, your 2A is cheaper discontinued model without very important features of 3p such as Azimuth on the fly the OP is asking for. Also your TP is 25 years older than the new TP. So what’s the point ?


If the OP would like to buy a great tonearm today with ALL adjustments on the fly (VTA with additional fine tuning and AZIMUTH on the fly) then the best in my opinion is Reed 3p.

In my opinion TriPlanar is ugly industrial design while the Reed 3p is pretty elegant (remind me of DaVinci tonearm a bit).

Is Reed the company that uses wood for the arm?

Yes, they use wood, mine is Cocobolo, the wood is oiled and it does not change its properties, it is not just a simple wooden stick. From the new line of Reed I also like 1H and 2G models. Find more images on Artisan Fidelity site.

It is, but also features the hardest metal bearings used in any tonearm made worldwide. This allows the bearings to be adjusted so there is zero play, something you can't do with a jeweled bearing (lest it crack). So it has the least chatter and sticktion (I made that word up but you know what I mean) of any arm made. So while it might not win any beauty contests, it does get the job done. Of any arm I've tried and used it comes the closest to sounding like my master tapes.

From Reed.lt :

"Another Reed 3Ps innovation is its bearing system. Although tonearm bearing system can be considered as gimbal, it acts like unipivot one. However, major difference from unipivot system is that instead of a single pivot three pivots and both vertical and horizontal axis’ magnetic stabilizers are used. Such bearing system is as rigid as gimbal, but its friction coefficient is as low as in unipivot." 

** Personally I'm not sure if I can detect the difference in bearings between several super high quality tonearms.