Discuss The Viv Lab Rigid Arm

Great post!

Dover, a light bulb went on in my head. I think I now understand what you mean, but it still seems to be the equivalent of shortening the distance from stylus to spindle, which only moves the single null point closer to the spindle. Still underhung. 

@lewm 

Yes underhung with respect to the spindle, but when I say under and over hung with respect to a line at tangent to the null point

Have a look at the diagram here  ( figure 2 ) -

https://theaudiobeatnik.com/review-viv-lab-rigid-float-ha-tonearm-part-1/

With the arm in the middle position on the diagram, the stylus is at a null.

Now if you move the arm mount forward so the stylus is now forward of that null point, you can reduce the tracking error at the inside and outside of the record, increase the tracking error through the middle, but overall reduce the absolute maximum tracking error.

In May we visited our son in Tokyo for a few weeks, and I bought a Viv Float tonearm direct from the manufacturer, who is in a suburb of Tokyo near Yokohama.  This was necessitated by the fact that all the Tokyo based dealers were out of stock.  One of those dealers suggested I contact the Viv factory directly, and I finally did so thanks to my son acting as interpreter.  Even Akimoto-san, the designer and owner of Viv, was out of stock, and I had to wait until July to receive my tonearm here in Bethesda, by post from Japan.  Despite the language barrier, I perceive that Akimoto-san is a very nice guy and of course, honorable. I am using the Viv on my highly modified Lenco turntable where it can sit on the slate plinth adjacent to the platter.  One issue with implementing this tonearm is that you need a minimum of 45mm clearance, which is to say that the base needs to sit 45mm below the surface of an LP, in order to achieve a level arm wand using any typical phono cartridge. (Obviously, this minimum mount distance from the platter could vary a bit if the cartridge body is unusually tall.)  With the cartridges I have thus far auditioned, using a 5mm thick Boston Audio Mat2 on the Lenco platter and shimming the cartridge by 3mm together do  the trick of achieving the desired VTA.  The Viv arm base is very substantial, weighing at least 2 lbs, so sitting on the surface of the slate which is physically connected to the platter bearing by bolts and a clamp, I am not concerned about inadequate coupling of the tonearm to the platter bearing. So far, I have auditioned the following cartridges: Dynavector 17D3, Ortofon MC7500, and lately the ZYX Universe (the original version).  The Viv provides female RCA jacks for output but the wiring permits a balanced connection if one wants that, because the outer barrel of the RCA jack is not connected to ground. There is a separate ground lug.  The ensemble is running into my modified Manley Steelhead which drives the built in amplifiers of my Beveridge 2SW speakers for all frequencies above 80Hz.  Below 80Hz, the signal goes via an external Dahlquist crossover to a Theshold Class A amplifier driving home built Transmission Line woofers.  I bought the "9HA" version of the tonearm, 9 inches arm wand and made of aluminum.  For a cost premium, there are CF versions of all the different lengths.  I decided to go with aluminum, because in the event I found the arm to be too lively (i.e., too resonant as noted by some reviewers in describing the alu versions), I could temper the resonance by using a CF headshell, or by using CF shims, or by putting some heat shrink on the arm wand. In practice, I started out with CF headshells but right now I am using the Viv (aluminum) headshell with a 3mm CF shim that I bought on line.

Here is where I could wax poetic about the sound of the 3 cartridges in this tonearm.  Suffice to say that each of the 3 cartridges sounds better in the Viv than it has in either of two other well regarded conventional overhung pivoted tonearms. The characteristic sound is "vivid", as the name suggests (dynamic contrasts are very well done, and I can hear why some thought that effect was partly due to resonance, tamed by a touch of CF), coherent (I detect absolutely no negative effect of the TAE at outer or inner grooves), and undistorted.  I think that individual instruments in large orchestral pieces are more easily appreciated. Sound stage is open and spacious.  Sense of depth is as good as I ever heard, if not better, and the Beveridge speakers are champions of depth.  I'm really hear to say that one ought to open one's mind to the idea that it is possible that minimizing TAE (which is the reason we ended up with spindle overhang and headshell offset angle) at the cost of increasing the skating force might not be the best approach or the only valid approach to the design of a pivoted tonearm. Try it; you might like it.

In the second paragraph, 5 lines from the bottom, "here", not "hear".  Hate when i do that.