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tonearms with VTA-towers for true "VTAF"

Hi All,
I think the time has come to look at some more 'advanced' tone-arms that sport VTA towers. ('Old skool' is getting us not much further with this, or?))

During a lot of other, related postings it seems a good subject, I think.

Our experts, all might agree, that:

1) If you want to push the envelope for BEST possible replay, constant VTA 'adaptation' is an unavoidable matter. (nobody said madness :-)

2) I understand this means a TOP cart, inevitably with a 'most modern' type Fine-Line contact stylus, forget elliptical or can one even mention the word, spherical?

Add some TOP cantilever materials like:
- Beryllium (hard to get, as it is a very tricky material to work with i.e. very poisonous in powder form),
- Boron (which mostly has replaced the former),
- Titanium?? (was used by some of the better AT carts),
- Ruby, well some like it I hear,
- Sapphire?? (some one liked that better then Ruby, but VERY little seems about),
- Diamond (see e.g. the DV odd-ball 17D3), etc.

This should make for some VERY detailed and revealing reproduction (even in an MM cart), add to this the most revealing ingredients of a TOP LO-MC.

The end result is, that you can now here some marvellous detail (carved-outness of images, stage-depth -width, and on), B U T ONLY if your VTA is at its VERY closest to what the record was cut to! (Else you find your cart, record, arm, phono-pre, .... system sux :-)

More interesting yet, even the same vinyl brands have not always used the same cutting angles (over time). Anything from just under 20deg. to about 25deg. is what we find!

Next, these high res. styli also have each one their own preferred SRA / VTA angles, i.e. the stylus line-ridge related to the cantilever is a variable too.

Add this all up and you have a problem, particularly if you care for truly top play-back.

If you have a "VTA tower" it only seem to take 15sec. to change to the correct, previously found VTA, you do need to be organised though. If you want some know-how, Doug can tell, see also the discussion under:
"VTA setting for 'parabolic' and 'elliptical' styli"
http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?eanlg&1244713018

There we have mentioned 3 current contenders, I quote: "Graham, VPI, TriPlanar plus a few very costly linear trackers..."

WHAT ABOUT THE: Kuzma 4Point?!

If I wouldn't like e.g.:
- multiple added connections (Graham, 7 in total?)
- wobbly Unipivots (VPI)
- too many fiddly pieces to make up the arm (TriPlanar)
- air bearings, or worse yet 'electronic' arm-feed

If I'd have an issue with these, I've no working solution to the VTAF I'd be looking for.

What say you?

Greetings,
Axel

axelwahl
halcro's avatar
halcro
2,664 posts
 
Larry's point is valid....but instead of talking theory, let's talk real numbers.
On even the shortest 9" tonearm, if one raises the VTA by 2mm it changes the overhang by 0.008mm.
If one raises the VTA by 5mm it changes the overhang by 0.05mm.
Does anyone here seriously claim that they can adjust overhang to this degree of accuracy? 👀
larryi
3,757 posts
 
Halcro,

You are correct that this is more a theoretical issue than anything else. That would be the case, too, with regard to the putative advantage of the ET2 moving the arm in an arc to maintain the same effective arm length (although, with the ET2 arm, at less than 9" in length, the amount of variance would be higher than the amount you calculated for a 9" arm).

I certainly hope that vinyl reproduction is more "robust" than what perfectionist insist on for alignment accuracy and optimization for all other parameters. It would be nice to own something like the SMARTractor and an oscilloscope for setting azimuth, etc., but, it would be a real tragedy if these things were necessities.
dougdeacon
3,338 posts
 
Fleib wrote:
I don't know about the rest of you, but to me improper VTA/SRA is much more objectionable than a bit more alignment error.
That's also how my ears work.
larryi
3,757 posts
 
I don't really know how audible is incorrect alignment because I have never systematically changed alignment to determine what is audible.

Given how much easier it is to change VTA/SRA, however, I have done that experiment. I too have noticed that small VTA/SRA changes seem to have a pretty significant impact, particularly on high frequency sibilance and edginess. Even a change in height of less than 1mm can change the sound quite a bit even though that translates to a fraction of one degree of change in angle.
halcro's avatar
halcro
2,664 posts
 
I certainly hope that vinyl reproduction is more "robust" than what perfectionist insist on for alignment accuracy and optimization for all other parameters. It would be nice to own something like the SMARTractor and an oscilloscope for setting azimuth, etc., but, it would be a real tragedy if these things were necessities.
LOL Larry....😄
When I think that for over twenty years I set up my cartridges with a generic arc cut from Hi-Fi Answers and pasted onto a wobbly thick bit of cardboard....⁉️
I recall being just as thrilled with the sound then as I am now however...👍
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