Hi Guys,
First off, I am the Reed importer and every thing I say here is my opinion and it may be worth what you are paying for it...
The sound? For me the 3P has a more refined sound than the 2A. More air is the first thing I hear. The sound, top to bottom, has a feeling of a little more ease about it or as some have said, more fluidity. Vocal textures are slightly chestier. High piano notes, female vocals and cymbals are where the refinement shows most. For me, there are three parts to a note. Attack, bloom and decay. I don't hear any lack of attack on either arm which, IMHO, are as good as any arm I have heard and better than most. The bloom of a cymbal or piano note after the initial attack with the 3P grows a little more before it starts to withdraw. The decays are longer and seemingly cleaner and clearer. Maybe I should say more pure. Less artifacts hanging around in the background. The area where I do not hear any significant change is bass. I have long thought the bass on the 2A has been one of its strong points so I don't think the 3P is missing anything on bass in any way. It is as three dimensional bass as I have heard.
The azimuth adjustment change has been made so that the 3P now has azimuth adjustment on the fly. It works brilliantly I might add. It is easy, fast and solid. The concerns over changing the rotational axis is a non issue for most cartridges, again, IMHO. If the azimuth adjustment is less than a couple of degrees, which should include most carts, I hear no loss of clarity in either channel over the 2A. More than three degrees may or may not be another story but none of my favorite carts need more than a degree or so of azimuth adjustment so I did not test this. For my testing, I used three different MM carts and two MC carts. All of various compliance ratings. All tracked well. As a side note, one of my carts has a slight tracking problem on two different tracks out of hundreds I play. The 3P reduces the tracking error on these two tracks.
For those that aren't familiar with the 3P, it uses a single bearing for the horizontal pivot and two bearings for a stable vertical axis. It also has a magnetic anti-skate. The AS is a big improvement. Arms like the 2A, Tri-Planar and others use a pivoted arm with a weight that rides against a pin attached to the armwand for AS. While this works, it adds noise and it is easily heard. I always preferred no AS with the 10.5" and 12" Reeds. Not that they did not need AS, they would benefit from a small amount but the added noise was worse. Now I can add a small amount of AS and no noise.
Another area that is new and I can't say for sure what it is doing for the sound, is magnetic dampening. I wish it was adjustable so I could experiment with its contributions. Alas, it is not, at least for now.
Bottom line for me is, the 3P has raised the bar and in no small way. Not just sonically but for ease of set up. Sounding great with the least amount of coloration is paramount for all of us but as a seller of arms, there is another consideration. If the arm is difficult to set up, chances are the owner will never hear how good the arm really is. It matters not how good it can sound. It only matters how good the arm sounds with the owner's set up skills. The 3P Reed lets the owner get to its full potential faster and easier than any other arm I have experienced. I think the novice as well as the most adept set up guys will appreciate that.
I did not intend for this to turn into a mini review but I do get carried away at times.
