Well Tempered Signature turntable and arm

An old thread but one comment needs to be corrected, because two statements there are completly wrong:

Vicdamone wrote:
The carbon Well Tempered arms were sand filled which made them slightly heavier than the metal arms. There are various arm tower designs which in the end do the job.

This is not the case:
The Carbon Well Tempered Reference tonearm was NOT filled with sand!
It was a lighter design!

I know this very well because I had the 9" Reference arm on my WT Reference but I received a unique 10" carbon armtube for my WT Signature to replace its stainless-steel armtube! This custommade 10" armtube again had no sand inside the tube!

Sand was used in the early WT Classic tonarm as well as in the Signature tonearm. (as well as in the later tonearms with golfball-silicone bearings)

After I had the armtube of the Signature arm replaced with the new non-sandfilled carbon armtube it sounded better!

Regarding the newer golfball versions:
I never liked them, they weren't that sophisticated for a precise setup.

I think that the Reference and Signature where the peak of WT tonearm design

BUT:
having used both for years I had to realize that despite the very nice sound:

!!! My Well Tempered tonearms bent cantilevers of cartridges !!!

I started from the beginning to use thinner silicon-fluid for damping which Mr. Brakemeier, designer of the amazing Apolypt turntable recommended to use
(he also recommended ZYC cartridges which I agree, they were a perfect match). So the lets call it bearing friction was for sure lower than with the thicker orig. silicone fluid.

But all my cartridges after a period of max. 500 hours developed "bent cantilevers":
Seen from the front this bent was towards the right side, i.e. outer groove of the record. This happened because the resistance/friction of the silicone was still too high.

I killed a Koetus Urushi Tsugaru, a Urushi Wazima as well as two expensive ZYX cartridges. 

Too bad.

I would never again use a WT tonearm, too expensive considering the damage done to those cartridges.

My first Well Tempered was the Record Player that I bought in about 2000. Very interesting table, and i learned the basics of setting up a WT on it. I moved on from it to a Teres when a remarkable opportunity occurred. The a few years back I came across a Well Tempered Reference locally and I snapped it up.

It is an interesting table, that is awesome in some aspects, and less than exciting to use in others. The arm is relatively easy to adjust, but setting up overhang is a royal pain in the butt. Otherwise all the other techniques for setting up a WT held true for it. One thing about arm set up. I was always conservative on how deep I set the paddle. I would start with the maybe 1/4" of the paddle submerged and then i would gradually lower it till I found the level of stability and dampening I wanted. I ran several cartridges on it and never skewed a cantilever. I ran a Koetsu Urushi Tsuguru, ZYX 4D, Ortofon A90, Audio Technica OC9 III, and Ikeda 9 Kawami on it.

Aside from setting up overhang, I found it irritating that the feet could not be leveled. I also thought the motor and the fact that it had no speed control options to be an irritant. Supposedly LP Gear sold a new belt for them that was the best option, but my WTR always ran a tad fast. I always came across other opinions that the corian base was actually rang more than the MDF stacks in the Classic design. Sure it was pretty as could be for a 1990’s era table, but all that engineered material still rang.

All in all I liked the table. But when it came time to gather my monies and buy a SOTA Cosmos Eclipse I sold the Well Tempered Reference and did not miss it at all.