SAEC WE 506/30 incoming. Anybody here with any experience with this arm?

tkr,

Good to hear you have and are enjoying the WE506, it certainly is quite a statement on any TT, both visually and of course sonically. It is worth some experimentation of the set up, you may actually prefer the Stevenson alignment after all, my view on tonearm geometry has been 'radicalised' by using a straight arm recently, so no offset, no sideways forces on the stylus tip, and of course no counteracting force (anti skate). Actually, in the arm I am using now there is also no bearing, so by all accounts, it should sound a mess! BUT, no, it is phenomenal, all across the LP side, absolutely no discernible difference in any passage from start to finish, no tracing distortion can be heard.. The arm is the ViV Labs FR9, with Aidas Mammoth Gold Mkii cartridge. So my thoughts would be to not get too hung up on reducing tracing error to the minimum, but to reduce the sideways forces on the cantilever as much as possible, this may bring the best result, and one which I will aim to do with my 506 over the coming month..

Rgds,
Paul

Dear @ps68  : You are talking of different issues with your Vivid, different trade-offs and it's up to each one of us to choose the best trade offs for each one of us.

In the " paper " I can't see that Vivid is or could be a better trade-off . Different yes but.....

R.

R,

Perhaps you misunderstood my post, I encourage tkr to experiment for best results, using whatever geometry sounds best to his ears.

To my ears with 40yrs analogue experience, the straight, zero offset ViV Labs RF9 tonearm sounds better than any other arm I have owned including the wonderful SAEC, not different, but BETTER..

Rgds,
Paul 

@ps68 
Thank you for your input. I will try out other alignments than Stevenson, simply to see if I am missing something. The reason why it is so alluring to stay with Stevenson alignment, is that every cartridge I have used on my FR 64 S with Stevenson plops right in on the SAEC 506 in the right place. Only a matter of rotating the cartridge ever so slightly.

I may be a bit lazy.  

            Regards TKR

Dear @ps68  : Maybe you are the  Viv tonearm UK distributor as some of  the system items you show in your Agon virtual system .

If you really are a Vivid distributor then what you posted/opinion could be severely biased to.

As you I'm an experienced music lover and audiophile ( maybe not at your levels and certainly with golden ears. ) ) and owned over 25 different tonearms and listened to other too in my system and other gentleman systems and I sold out the SAEC 506 and 8000 because there are better performers. No the 506 is not " wonderful " only a decent one.

I can see that you modified the ML speakers crossover with boutique caps/inductors and resistors and puts on sale.
Well, those Duelund resistors are the worst one of the boutique type resistors but a loudspeaker what's need is not boutique parts but well engennering parts like the powertron resistors by Vishay or humble uncolored caps as Wima, Vishay or Kemet. All these well engeneering passive devices really are way better than the boputique ones.

I had and have first hand experiences in electronics and speakers with the $$$ boutique parts against the humble well engeneering designed passive parts.
No, I'm not an audio distributor of anything.

R.