what are some of best tonearms you own or experience with.

@dover - the next generation of Rega arms, especially the higher end ones (RB880, 2000- now 3000) have dramatic improvements. The 2000 came out with the RP10, which has since been replaced with the P10, so it has been a while since the new design and build was introduced. 

I can speak first hand as I had  a P5 with the stock arm, the RB700, which was very good, and at the advice of my friendly neighborhood Rega dealer who was adamant about the new arm improvements and guaranteed I would be blown away or he’d give me my money back for 3 months, I took him up on it and was absolutely blown away. As a matter of fact, I subsequently traded the P5 for the P8 and although it was a modest improvement, it was not nearly the discovery of the RB880. It has better cables and plinth and platter, and the plug in to the PSU is better, and the dust cover is much more convenient to remove while playing, so I don’t regret it, even though the price difference was more than the arm difference. 
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the RB880 or RB3000. I’ve been told it is not worth the difference for me to upgrade the 880 to the 3000 which I was considering. I think a $4K arm might be worth to consider for that level of expenditure, but for arms below that, Rega delivers more value for the buck.

I can't make comparisons to a lot of the pricey tonearms mentioned in this post but I think the Victor UA-7045 and UA-7082 tonearms have a lot to offer and they have been mentioned by at least two regular posters in this forum.
I have both of these arms and can't say enough about the build quality and engineering that went into them.
What really sets those arms apart from a lot of other arms is the ease of adjustments, both VTA and anti skate can be adjusted "on the fly" without worry of disturbing the arm when playing. They also have detachable headshells that are held rigidly in place by a locking clamp collar, uses any standard SME type headshell.
Go to the Vinyl Engine database and pull up the owners manual for a full description of the engineering behind this tonearm.

BillWojo

@sokogear besides the plastic material and the straightness issues of the VPI Tonearms which  I used to own, I was measuring excessive vibrations originating from the hanging dogleg plate as well as from the loosely VTA tower.

Ralph, when I say killed the sound, in my experience the use of fluid damping on the SME V reduced speed and coherency. Similar with the analog survival damping. In my experience soft materials tend to store energy, but dont disspate it cleanly like for example carbon fibre or M2052. You tend to get backward reflections back into the cartridge at the junction of each change in material.

@dover 

The nature of the material in the Sumiko kit allows it to damp the arm tube so there is less energy in it (the vibration is converted to a very slight amount of heat); 'talk back' to the cartridge has been reduced, IOW less resonance. Warren Gehl of ARC originally developed the Analog Survival Kit for Sumiko while he was employed in vibration control for a firm in California about 25 years ago or so. I've known Warren since the late 1970s (we've had plenty of conversation about this topic; I was using prototypes prior to his release of the product to Sumiko). He also developed a platter pad that is spectacular at controlling resonance in the LP itself. I feel lucky to own one; he can't make them anymore since OSHA would never allow it.

 Adding the Analog Survival Kit increased the mass of the arm. For this reason it limited the cartridges that worked to ones that had lower compliance.

This doesn't make sense, increasing the mass would help it work better with lower compliance cartridges - but for the aforementioned reasons I think its not the best option.

If you read both of these comments, first mine and then yours, you'll see that they are saying exactly the same thing, except for the part that says 'This doesn't make sense'. So I'm thinking you misread my comment. Otherwise we seem to be on the same page here.

@OP: as a ’one arm’ solution I would include Audiocraft AC-3300/4400 on your list. It offers a wide choice of interchangeable armpipes (including ones specifically dedicated to EMT and SPU ’A’ types), various counterweights as well as adjustable oil damping. So far there hasn’t been one cartridge that didn’t shine in that arm.