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Why is the standard tonearm cable not good enough?

I just bought a Basis turntable with the Graham Robin arm and the Benz Micro L2. The arm comes with its own interconnect cable to the phono preamp. My dealer urges the purchase of a "high end" cable, which has to be connected to the separate box (with its own thin cable and plug to the tonearm) that is the Graham interface between the plug from the Graham arm and the RCA plug of the "high end" cable. Why is this necessary? Isn't the extra connection and box detrimental to the signal? Shouldn't (and doesn't) Graham supply the most appropriate interconnect cable with its arm?
kocsis

Showing 2 responses by tok20000

tok20000's avatar
tok20000
608 posts
 
This is a good question.

Personally, I like my Rega RB1000 tonearm because it has very high quality IC from the cartridge to the male RCA plugs with NO break in the cable. True it does not allow me to easily upgrade the cable (although it can be done, the whole arm has to be recabled though), however, I think Rega used high enough quality cable to get it right the first time.

KF
tok20000's avatar
tok20000
608 posts
 
Tim,

I am a vinyl newbie, and I was under the impression that the RB1000 tone arm had no breaks in the cable. I might be wrong, you may be right, but I am not 100% sure either way.

I was assuming (there I go doing the ASS U ME thing) that since the RB1000 did not have a phono box that it plugged into that the cable in the arm was continuous with no breaks.

One thing: Rega's website does not address this issue at all. They do say this about the RB1000: 'Do not try to rewire this arm.'

Anyone else shed some light on this?

KF
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