Tonearm: Phantom vs. 4 Point vs. 10.5


Hi

I'm planning on upgrading my tonearm. My analoge setup is:
TW-Acoustic Raven One with Kuzma Stogi arm and Lyra Delos.

I'm interested in theese 3 arms:

Graham Phantom III: It gets good recomendations, also on the Raven One.

TW-Acoustic Raven 10.5: It is from the same manufactor as my turntable, so they should match.

Kuzma 4 Point: Because i have Kuzma and like the quality of it and because Michael Fremer said: I'm in love.

What can you say about these arms (sound) and witch will you recomend for my turntable.

Pierre
pierre1976
What i get from your anscers is that, Phantom i easy to setup and a good match to the Raven One. But TW10,5 is a better match, but diffucult to setup.
Is that right?

well...No.
The Phantom is shorter but has a nice black finish. The Raven has a nice print on it and the Kuzma is longer than the others.
when you want an Arm which "matches" to your Table, you know, Synergy is the magic word, roll a dice. It is a difficult decision.
Personally I would choose a CD Player. Makes life much easier. It has Synergy with the Remote...
Think about a Kuzma.
Just noticed this thread. The Kuzma 4Point needs no introduction for those who have read about it and perhaps have heard it. As a Kuzma dealer I haven't installed a 4Point on an AC Raven but have successful installations on tables other than Kuzma including Acoustic Signature Final Tool and SME 30/2. The SME was a couple of months ago, and the customer is happily using a Lyra Titan i on it. A current news item on the Kuzma website features a couple of photos of his installation.

Although you didn't mention it, another choice is the Stogi S 12 VTA, especially with the silver/gold Crystal wiring. Like the Graham it is a unipivot design; its performance comes remarkably close to the 4Point at much lower cost.
Jarraa, when I first installed 10.5, I didn't pay too much attention to AS, just leave it around the middle way. Later on, I used HiFi&RR test record (the torture track) to test the AS, to my surprise, applying max AS resulted in the push of arm to the spindle fast. Also noticable is whenever I drop the arm to the record, it skipped a bit quite often.

I wrote to TW about this AS issue I encountered. 2 Months without answer. After installation of 2nd arm Graham Phantom II (upgrade from I, waiting upgrade to Supreme), I resend my email to TW. Thomas replied. Asked me to do a simple test. Apparently either the magnet in the AS screw or magnet inside the bearing house was installed wrong, reversed. So Thomas sent me another AS screw with a new magnet. I super glued it myself to its correct position. All the problems solved easily.

So I still have the 'bad' AS screw with me. When I have a chance I will let it touch another TW 10.5 AS screw to see how it goes. Then I will know whether the screw is reversed or the magnet inside bearing house is reversed.
Often these threads inspire references to the Mint Tractor.
I would expect a protractor to give good tracing of the stylus tip across the ideal arc when aligned but does the Mint detect whether your cantilever & generator are misaligned with the cartridge body or do you use another process?
I can tell you, that i have just ordred the Kuzma 4point.
It will arrive in 3 weeks :-)