My first really good arm was the Graham 2.0. Later upgraded to 2.2. A lot of the reason for getting it was, besides the sound, the detachable arm wand that came with a jib that enabled super precise and simple cartridge alignment. Because back then I had fallen for a lot of the BS repeated endlessly around here to this day making it sound like cartridge alignment is darn near impossible without spending more on alignment jigs than you have in your rig.
That's no exaggeration. Just last week someone used a kilobuck jig to mount a $200 cartridge.
Anyway, two points to this story- one, there's more to it than sound and some arms do make this harder than it needs to be.
The other point is I eventually learned the harm all those connections do to the delicate cartridge signal. My next arm was the Origin Live Conqueror, an arm with no connections but the cartridge pins thanks to its hard wired phono leads. Never again will I buy an arm that requires I also buy an interconnect. At the level of an arm like the Conqueror a guy could easily spend several grand on the interconnect alone. Been there. Done that. No thanks.
That's no exaggeration. Just last week someone used a kilobuck jig to mount a $200 cartridge.
Anyway, two points to this story- one, there's more to it than sound and some arms do make this harder than it needs to be.
The other point is I eventually learned the harm all those connections do to the delicate cartridge signal. My next arm was the Origin Live Conqueror, an arm with no connections but the cartridge pins thanks to its hard wired phono leads. Never again will I buy an arm that requires I also buy an interconnect. At the level of an arm like the Conqueror a guy could easily spend several grand on the interconnect alone. Been there. Done that. No thanks.