Comparison of sonic qualities of some tonearms

Kenny, assuming you had all the money in the world, how would you recognize a tonearm that had “no sound of its own”?

I currently have 3 tonearms that all have been used with a heavily modified and upgraded Lenco 78 that have been running exactly on speed for several years. It did take me several years to getting it running correctly as I was learning on the go. The recent switch to an Origin Live Illustrious Mk3 arm has been a very enjoyable experience. The OP wanted to have a comparison of arms in the same system as in TT, cartridge, Phono Preamp, and arm. I rather recently had Whest in Great Britain upgrade my Whest 30RDT SE into a 30SE RDT PRO. It was a total gut job other than the chassis with better and more potent partsand circuit board being used in the returned version. The immediate impression with a Charisma Reference 2 cartridge and Andy Kim’s microridge stylus with boron cantilever as upgrades on the retip, was much more stable action of the stylus in the groove along with these sound characteristics: more dynamic with deeper and more powerful bass, consistently excellent across the midband with lucid and transparent sound, and the highs were also very good with the ability to recognize different maker’ instruments from others. The OL Illustrious Mk3 also is VERY easy to use and stays the same once you lock in adjustments. Every album sounds more like live instruments and the soundstage is both deep and wide. Instruments and singers are located distinctly. I’m sure there might be a better sounding arm out there but it will be much more expensive. I’ve had a Maplenoll Ariadne air bearing TT/arm for years that was my prior setup SQ wise of all time. Since, I’ve had 2 Origin Live Silver arms, VPI Classic original, Trans-Fi Terminator w/ Tomahawk arm & all upgrades they offered, Pete Riggle Woody arm. Tiring of the various things that needed occasional adjustment lead me back to the OL Illustrious Mk3. The combo I now use is by far the best sounding analog setup I’ve owned. Hope this was useful.

Bob

A very interesting discussion indeed.  Arms definitely matter.  In my opinion a lot. I am amused by Raul's comment that all arms should have silver wire.  Raul is a man who knows his stuff and several years ago, when I first bought my SL1200GAE he advised me to rewire the arm with silver wire and he gave me a source for the kit to do it.  So I did.  And of course it made a noticeable difference.  Be careful what you wish for.  I didn't like the difference and had to re-wire the arm again using Litz wire, which is still in it now.  Personal preference.  At that time I still had a heavily KAB modded SL1200 which had a similar arm, but aluminum.  The G series arms are magnesium.  The latter are much better, due to superior damping.  Damping is important as has been discussed in this thread.  In a vintage system in a second home I have a turntable with two arms:  SME Series II and Series III.  These work well with various Shure V-15s and older Ortofons among others.  It is essential to match arm with cartridge.  Years ago I had a Tri-planar, but tired of it.  The absolute worst arm in my experience was the AR, sorry if that offends someone.  I worked in a high end hifi retail from approximately 1970 to 1980 and set up hundreds of TTs during that time and of course ever after.

Oh I forgot another significant arm in my life.  A Rabco SL8E.  This was mounted on a Thorens TD125MkII and worked well.  It was  a tangental tracking arm, actually it was always hunting, but It lifted at the end of play and it was reliable.