Tonearm recommendation

Regarding the Durand tonearms I can certainly speak to the current model the Kairos that has replaced the Talea. As noted the tonearm material is now a composite rather than wood, as well as performing better I believe this material is easier to work with and more consistent. The Kairos is also a very elegant and simplified turntable, a unipivot stripped down to its essence. It is easy to set up once you get a handle on how to do it and once set up allows excellent and repeatable fine tuning of VTF, SRA and Azimuth -- the latter via adjusting the height of the "outrigger" that controls the lateral roll. Full details can be found in my review which is linked to below. I suspect you will be very pleased with this arm.

The Kairos replaced a TriPlanar in my setup and the comparison is not even close, the Kairos was superior in all respects in particular the ability to keep control of even the most complex and highly modulated material. Since posting the review below I've had another several months experience and find myself enjoying everything I throw at it

http://db.audioasylum.com/mhtml/m.html?forum=general&n=706909&highlight=FolkFreak&search...=

No, not what I meant at all. I am well aware of the VTF/VTA interaction you describe and appreciate the need to adjust the two iteratively. First time I observed this was on my old TriPlanar and the effect was not subtle (from recollection 0.5G or more going from my initial VTA/SRA setting to where I finally settled)

What I am referring to is that the small counterweight on the Kairos is rather loosely threaded and thus with gross movement of the arm (i.e. moving it on and off records) it may wander slightly. I've never seen this happen but have merely observed that when I recheck VTF it has sometimes shifted despite my having made no adjustments. Maybe I should add a small dot of locking compound to the thread and all will be well.

ct0517 -- further to "repeatability" when it comes to tonearm setup. Firstly I should discuss my approach to setup. It’s the typical iterative VTF/SRA approach using a Cartridge Man stylus gauge (best device of it’s type I’ve found, unreliable little buggers however that are prone to breaking down) and then setting SRA using a DinoScope. Azimuth is set roughly using a Fozgometer then fine tuned by ear using mono female voice (method per Durand, see his site for reference)

Critical to this is the ability to go backwards and forwards on tonearm height to dial in SRA very finely. Of the four arms I’ve owned recently the SME-IV is a joke (one way only adjustment and for that even you needed to buy the FD-IV setup). The Wand+ is a set screw and manual raise/lower, obviously rough but bear in mind the price of this arm is much less than all the others. The Triplanar at first glance seems fine but the reality is the dial based approach is quite confusing -- you have to remember a) which way you turn and b) how many times -- in reality I was always needing to do multiple turns to remind myself if I was raising or lowering and then dial back -- a real pain. The Kairos is a simple gradated dial on the base, easy as pie.

Finally to dial in azimuth on the Triplanar you do have a grub screw which is quite precise but again there’s no direct easily visible feedback between adjustment and the arm wheras on the Kairos being a unipivot you can directly see how raising the balance bar tilts the arm clockwise (as viewed from the front) and vice versa. The Wand+ is also quite intuitive once you get the hang of it, you move a set of offset weights left or right to tilt the arm to one side or another, seems clunky but it is actually very precise and repeatable.

In conclusion repeatability and ease in adjustment comes from a clear visible link between the adjustment and the impact therof which is true for the Kairos while it was not for the TriPlanar. My one knock on the Kairos however would be that I think the small VTF weight may wander (i.e. drift on the thread) in use -- keep rechecking VTF regularly and you are good however.

To be clear, I’m talking about changes in VTF of +/- 0.05g here so nothing that’s going to do any long term damage to anything. It may be just as much room temperature interacting with the damping in the cartridge, who knows and it’s certainly nothing I’ve ever heard an issue with on listening. Also if I was that bothered I could simply take off the smaller counterweight and adjust only the main weight which has a locking screw, that way no concerns

Personally I find VTF the least important parameter in tonearm setup, unlike alignment, SRA and Azimuth the difference between being perfectly on (to +/- 0.01g say) and accurate to +/- 0.1g has never seemed that big, at least with my Air Tight PC-1. For example on going from the TriPlanar to the Kairos I was able to go from 1.85g to 2.05g, the former had been necessary to get the cartridge to be open and lively on the TriPlanar wheras with the much better controlled Kairos I could take up the VTF into more of the typical manufacturers recommended range and get a better sound without losing energy. And lets not mention my other cartridge the Miyajima Zero which tracks at a whopping 3.5g and shifting things 0.5g or more is no big deal

Dietrich’s UNIProtractor, which I also use, is set up to align to his UNI Din standard which was discussed earlier in this thread. The UNIProtractor is a very accurate system but does rely upon being able to align with the tonearm pivot very accurately, while this can be performed very easily on arms like a Kairos which has a defined pivot point it can be much harder on an SME IV say where the precise pivot point is hard to spot
 A review of the current iteration of this tool is here 

http://www.theaudiobeat.com/blog/smartractor.htm