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Tonearms: Ripoff?

If you search for tonearm recommendations you'll find an overwhelming amount of praise for $1k and less products. Audiomods and Jelco are the two most mentioned.

The Audiomods is just some guy making Rega-based tonearms in a workshop. Just some guy is putting out tonearms that compete with tonearms that cost many times the price -- from the likes of SME, Clearaudio, VPI, Graham, etc.

So the question is -- are tonearms just a scam? How is it that everyone loves Audiomods and Jelco to death and never talks about / dismisses high end tonearms? Is it because there's no real difference between one of these low-cost tonearms and the high end ones? Is an Audiomods Series V ** really ** the equivalent of a SME V? Some guy in a workshop equals the famed precision of SME? Is that once you have the math and materials worked out all tonearms are essentially the same? Or is it that most owners of record players online are dumpster-diving for vintage gear and simply can't afford to listen to better?

So, what's going on?
madavid0
cdavids449
17 posts
 
I had a rega 250 on a townshend rock 7,just purchased a helius omega and noticed an improvement and it wasn't subtle. More so than moving from 1000 dollar preamp to a 7000 dollar preamp
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,510 posts
 
@cdavids449---Excellent! The Helius Omega is great on the Rock, I've heard that combo in the room of the U.S. distributor of both at a couple of hi-fi shows in S. California. It's beautiful looking too, curvy like a voluptuous woman's figure. Did you get the standard Omega, or the Silver/Ruby?
cdavids449
17 posts
 
I bought the silver ruby version. I was hesitant because the oil trough on the table is supposed to equalize all tonearms. But I noticed a substantial improvement over the rega arm. 
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,510 posts
 
I too read that the Rock’s headshell-end damping reduces sonic differences between arms, but that is an over-statement. Arm tube stiffness, bearing quality, geometric design, dynamic behavior, and other factors remain, and produce resulting audible differences. In a way, the Rock’s lack of resonances actually increases the audible differences between arms. It just makes arms marginal because of their own resonances acceptable.
jond's avatar
jond
5,687 posts
 
jollytinker gave me a good idea I think I'm going to start going on political forums and start arguments about cables. :p
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