Tonearms: Ripoff?

So far the only thing I've seen are recommendations for cheap tonearms. 

@noromance disagreed with me and then proceeded to recommend a Jelco.

So what will a TW, SME, Basis, Graham, etc, give me that a Jelco or Audiomods won't?

So no one wants to defend high end tonearms?

Maybe a lot, or maybe nothing.

If you don't know, you can just say "I don't know".

A Tri-Planar U2 costs $6k. A Triangle Art arm to go with my TA table is also $5k (although I'm sure they will offer me a discount because they never sell me anything at retail). But...I can get an Audiomods V with a VTA tower or a Jelco 850 for a fraction of the cost.

Let's say I want to move up from my TA Zeus to an Apollo? Maybe I'll take my bonus and go crazy with a Anna or above? THEN what will a premium tonearm give me?

What "features" matter to anyone? Counterweight adjustment, VTA tower...that's pretty much it right? I can get all useful features out of an Audiomods V, so why do I need anything else? Isn't there a performance difference?

Typically, you missed the entire point of my reply. Did you read anything after the sentence you quoted above? As do many of us, I fins that a correctly matched tonearm to be invaluable to optimizing the analog experience.

So high end tonearms are a ripoff?

@rauliruegas You seem to be trying hard to say "high-end tonearms are a ripoff" but without hurting people's feelings.

@br3098 and others say that what matters is matching the tonearm with the rest of the system. "You don't need to pay a lot for tonearms" is implicit in that statement so it's essentially saying "high-end tonearms are a ripoff".

In regards to your house and car analogy, a 20 million dollar home will be in prime real estate with the best views and neighbors. The home will be large and offer a lot of room for the best decor to offer the most pleasing living experience. Having two Ferraris would boost by joy of driving tremendously. The experience of living like that could not be replicated if I lived in a $100k home and owned one Ford pickup truck.

No one would say: "it's all about matching the home and car to your personal needs".

The isn’t whether I want to spend a lot of money on high end tonearms or not, the issue is if they are a ripoff or not. Do they offer audio performance above cheaper ones? This is NOT hard to understand.

So far there is ONE poster who says he’s seen an improvement moving up from cheaper tonearms to more expensive ones. The others have all refused to address the question or admit that they think high end tonearms are a ripoff.

The price difference between, say, a Schiit Vidar ($700) and a D'Agostino Progression is about 3,000%. The audio performance difference is of course night and day -- in terms of an arbitrary numeric factor maybe somewhere around 500% better? The value isn't the issue; there are people who think the value proposition is acceptable, therefore it can't be considered to be a "ripoff".

If there was no audible difference between the Vidar and the Progression, we could definitely say that in regards to audio performance the D'Agostino is a ripoff.

Since there is a large and clear audible difference between the two amps mentioned above we can't call the more expensive one a ripoff in regards to audio performance.

Now let's take two tonearms, the Audiomods V and the Durand Kairos. The price difference is very large, easily around 500-600%. Now, from an audio perofmance perspective is there a meaningful difference? How much better does the Kairos sound -- 100%, 50%, 10%, 2% ? Assuming both arms are well-matched to the cartridge in question, IS THE KAIROS A RIPOFF?

So, there's a few Durand arms that've come up today. One is a Talea for $5k, and the other is a Telos for $14k -- setting aside the Telos which this guy is asking for an amount that costs more than my enitre vinyl rig including the $1k I just spent on a Hashimoto SUT -- the Talea at $5k seems to be a huge amount for what you're getting. Let's say I drop the seller down to $4.5k...what am I getting with this arm that the $3.5k Helius Omega Silver Ruby with cryo silver wiring won't give me? Or the 3k for the Clearaudio Universal with VTA? I like the Universal because it looks cool, but it's offputting there's no reviews of it out there.

BTW, Durand also sells a record weight for $3.5k.....

No one wants to answer the question. Most serious responses boil down to "expensive tonearms are a scam". For example @lohanimal post above in which he likens it to the difference between a Casio and Patek; the Patek keeps time no better than a Casio so therefore it’s a scam.

The others just simply dodge the question by repeating meaningless truisms about matching arms to the system. If, say, a FIdelity Research is a good match and so is a Triplanar U12 SE, would it be foolish to chose the Triplanar — because you’re paying a lot more for the same performance? If that’s so, isn’t the Triplanar just a scam in the final analysis? Some guy with a machine shop making huge margins on suckers?

A few responders DO say there is a performance improvement with higher end tonearms — but these are the clear minority in this thread.

Well I ended up buying a used Reed 2A off Audiogon for $2k. Later on I also broke down and bought the $600 SmartTractor.

Alright. I'm resurrecting this topic because...I may have been RIPPED OFF. Not by anyone in specific but by being led down a false path re turntable systems and their upgrade paths.

My old turntable system:
MoFi StudioDeck
AT-AC9ML/II
Ifi Phono 2

I was really pleased with the dynamics and overall quality of good records. From this experience I went down an upgrade path which lead me to the following:
Triangle Art Concerto + upgraded platter (about 3 times thicker).
TA Zeus
TA speed controller
Reed 2A tonearm ($2k used from Audiogon)
Hashimoto SUT (from builder on eBay)
Chinese all-tube phono stage + common NOS tubes and Herbie tube rings
Smartractor for best possible alignment.

So, fast forward to several days ago. I noticed that the iPhono 3 Black had been released and was getting super positive reviews. There was a big jump in performance from the 2 matching the doubling of price. So I thought, why not try it out from Amazon I can always return it if needed. So I brought back out the StudioDeck. I was going to use this for phono break-in. This would also be a good opportunity to test my old deck and cart directly against the new and vastly more massive and expensive system. Now, I did set up the StudioDeck in another room and ran a pair of AudioQuest Forests across the room into my preamp (a cheap MBL 610 clone). The StudioDeck would have the advantage of not being in the listening room but I figured that in net the TA setup would still be better.

So I listened. First thing I noticed is that dynamics were pretty much EXACTLY the same. The old setup with the iPhono 3 seemed darker and little less detailed, but the experience was more-or-less similar. So basically....did I get savagely RIPPED OFF? In reality if MC design is good and the tables are setup right / run at the right speed are these systems basically all the same? So what's the deal? NONE of you guys realized this, some of you apparently with many years of experience?

Is it just the phonos? Is the cheap clone phono the bottleneck? I did put myself in the waiting list for a Don Sachs phono, will that be able to reveal a real upgrade? Will this iPhono 3 be able to show the upgrade after it burns in? Such a small upgrade for such a high cost seems like a flat out scam. Can any of you guys help me understand what's going on?