What's the best unipivot to arm ever made?

Dear Mike, Thanks for the URL. It is striking to me the degree to which the Telos is a "throwback" design. I note that it uses a string and weight for anti-skate and that the counter-weight is pretty far back from the pivot point, so it does not minimize effective mass. Further, the center of mass of the counter-wt is not below the pivot point so as to be in the same plane as the LP. I take this as a vindication of the design of certain vintage tonearms (the Grace wood unipivot comes to mind), not as a criticism per se of the Telos, because I am certain that it must sound great, based on what I heard from the Talea.

Have you ever auditioned the Pete Riggle wood tonearm? He is out there in your area is why I asked.

Stuff I thought I "knew" (like certain principles of modern tonearm design) is constantly being debunked, so finally nothing surprises me. After all, the RS-A1 tonearm sounds great, and it breaks every single rule anyone else ever posited.

Manitunc, I am attracted to the 714 (assuming that's the wood version), but now the prices have gotten so that I would need to be very sure about it before making a purchase. (There's one now on eBay for >$1000.) Do you own one, and more important, do you use it?

"My system is at the point where the limitations of a 9.5" arm are noticable."
Especially given that the Talea is actually 10.5 inches long, what does that statement mean?

Thanks, Joel. I did not mean for my remark to constitute a criticism of the design. Rather, I meant to imply that sometimes the "rules" of tonearm design are better off when broken, intelligently.

Having the center of mass of the counter-wt in the plane of the LP is said to result in less variation of VTF as the tonearm traverses a warp, or, I suppose, the normal vertical undulations imparted via the groove modulations. (But those vertical movements are, to say the least, microscopic.) Who, that can afford any one of these tonearms, plays warped LPs? Point is, I am not sure how critical this design element is or whether adopting it involves some other trade-down in sound quality.