Tonearm musings


Over the last couple of years I have upgraded much of my system, with the exception of my tone arm. The Allnic Amber shares an old Graham 1.5 t/c arm on a new Oracle Delphi MkVI gen 2 table. It sounds great but I often wonder would I notice much improvement, or any at all, if I upgraded my arm, which literally is the only older item I still have:
Herron VTPH-2a phono preamp, tubes rolled
LTA MicroZotl preamp, stage 2, tubes rolled
Pass Labs X250.8
Revel Salon2 arriving soon, I hope!
Your honest opinion appreciated
Thx
J
jw944ts

Showing 1 response by millercarbon

I had that Graham, it was my first arm. It was upgraded with the heavier weight pivot cap and I was using it with some Synergistic Research phono leads custom made for me by Ted Denney. Had this arm about a dozen years and it is a real nice arm but I came to realize all those connections can’t be good for as subtle a low level signal as a cartridge puts out. Still, Ted had made me a real nice set of wire and it took me a long time to risk upgrading to a better arm.

When I did, Origin Live Conqueror, it was night and day better. Not even close. One of the biggest upgrades I ever did, and I have had some good ones. This was I think a MkIII Conqueror, not even close to the current MkIV. I would think that now with the MkIV generation improvements you would not even need to go to Conqueror level to hear massive improvement. And I do mean massive.

Every single thing you can think of will be better. Imaging, dynamics, timbre, detail, width, depth, you name it. This was my experience and it explains why I now recommend anyone looking for an arm the most important thing to look for is hard wired integral phono leads. Do not even consider any arm that requires you buy an interconnect. Using interconnects both guarantees you spend more money, and adds noise and costs detail. Get any Origin Live arm you will hear what I mean.

And oh by the way I also have the same Herron phono stage. A very fine component. You will definitely hear every dollar’s worth of improvement from your new OL arm!