Well Tempered Reference Arm and Koetsu Rosewood Signature Combination

Reply to lewm,

Thanks for you comments. In my post I left out a key word and that is, I meant to say that I am seriously considering having Koetsu rebuild it.
Let me point out that a WTRef arm tube has no bearing. It is also mounted to a WT Classic table. The pivot end of the arm has a shaft going from it down to a round paddle which is immersed in a cup of silicone fluid. As the for the azimuth, I would only occasionally need to tweak it in. It wasn't always going out of adjustment. Per my post, before the suspension wore out (?? read on), I was fairly content with sound in almost all aspects except bass output. This is a well-used cartridge with many hours on it when I bought it. I always remember the bass from that Onyx Signature that I had in my Grace arm (which had double gimbal bearings) way back then which was probably due, in part, to the cart. being mounted in that arm and not a WT. I think I may agree with you on the heavy damping in the vertical direction. I should be able to lower the damping by decreasing the depth at which the paddle sits in the silicone cup.This is done by turning the cup (which is threaded)  x turns or partial turn so that the paddle sits higher in the fluid. I'm just remembering this now as I type that I have this feature in the arm and need to experiment. This may be causing the cantilever to collapse perhaps(?). I will check this and try it out. I not very keen on shelling out for a Graham or Dynavector arm.

To answer your original question,  I would like to know if I could keep my WTRA and spend the $$ on the rebuild and tweak in this set-up OR keep the arm and with another cartridge more suited for this arm? I've read on another blog that a some Koetsu enthusiasts listened to old Rosewood Sigs  made by Koetsu senior and  newer stone Platinums by the son and the older ones sounded much better that the newer. They mentioned the bass was always deficient on them (which I disagree with in terms of the  stone Koetsus). What's your experience with Koetsu, if any, and opinion on this point? Looking at the gamut of decent to very good  MC cartridges out there, it seems the rebuild is priced about the same or less than most of them. 

Thanks again, 

Statman71

To lewm's point:

The 'bearing' in either the original WT arm or the WT Reference arm or any of the current WTLab arms amounts to an arm tube and paddle assembly suspended by two mono-filament lines (fishing line) which are immersed in a cup of silicone fluid. This assembly acts as the
'pivot' point. I think I determined that having a Koetsu Sig, is more the culprit than the arm, reading several other commentary on this cartridge and going to Koetsus which have platinum magnets will make a difference in bass output.

To m-dB's point:

I remedied the WTT concave platter issue by going to my local hardware store (Do It Best) and spending a grand total of ~$1.29 (?) for a rubber (pliable) disc about the diameter of a 45rpm adaptor and ~2-3mm thick which just happened to fit perfectly in the center silver spindle area of the platter (on Classic table). No cutting to size required.  This effectively elevates LP label to just at (or VERY near) the same height the record is at at the outer edge of the platter.  Consequently, when I tighten the record clamp down, the vinyl is not oil-canned in at the label area (which would cause skating problems otherwise.   

fjn04-

From another regular old guy... I would say that using that arm with a Koetsu might work out ok as long as it is a Platinum and not a signature because as I found out, reading around the web, the Signatures can't play the frequency extremes regardless of the arm it's in which I found to be quite the truth. The platinum cartridges also have the platinum magnets which are bigger and produce another 200uV of output. I'm not too familiar with the Amadeus but I just read the literature on it at the WTLabs website and Bill Firebaugh says that the golf ball cannot be submerged in the silicone fluid more than 30%.  In my WTRef arm that equates to no more than just over the paddle, otherwise the arm will be way too damped and cause the cantilever to really bend (with a VTF of 1.8g). I would submerge it only a little. As I've read elsewhere on the 'Gon and elsewhere,  I agree with 100ohms of loading. I tried several values between 33 and 1K and it seems 100 ohms to best for what I want to hear. -Statman71