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In Reply to: RE: 12 in Tonearm posted by rockpassion on May 03, 2015 at 20:04:30
A 12' arm will not fit the VPI. Why do you want a 12" arm in the first place? If it is for the supposed better tracking don't waist your money. I have had a Jelco SA-750D 9" and 750L 12" on the same Thorens TD-124 and I could not hear ANY difference. There is a lot of supposition and not enough science to back the theory up.......
Follow Ups:
to explain why longer tonearms may have reduced tracing error. See section on arm length in Keith Howard's article.
The question is, what is audible? Some folks hear a difference, others do not. Of course other factors enter in as well. For a given arm design, such as the Jelcos, the longer the arm the greater the mass and that may affect cartridge compliance matching. Also, some folks consider that shorter arms may be more rigid but I suspect that is a matter of individual arm design.
So like so much in this hobby there is seldom a simple black or white answer.
"You can't know what the "best" is unless you have heard everything, and keep in mind that given individual tastes, there really isn't any such thing." HP
my experience between the two lengths involves a vpi table. when i bought the table, it had an sme 4 mounted. i wanted to try a vpi arm so stumbled onto a good deal on a 12 inch. i know we have a second variable of the unipivot and gimballed arm, but i think this observation will hold true.
i noticed the biggest difference on final cuts on records. there was a much more relaxed feeling. on janis ian's between the lines lp, the last cut on side one is called watercolors. a very beautiful song, why are the best ones always on the inside cut, anyway, with the sme, her voice could sound very hard and brittle on that cut, the vpi arm allowed a much more relaxed sound. this has carried over to any record with a challenging inner cut or like those 70's rock albums where the engineer was trying to cram an extra minute or two onto the album.
my good listening friend reported a similar experience. other than this, i can't report much else.
Tom Collins
for my part, the same alignment set with feikart protractor. also, the vpi allows azimuth adjustment and the sme did not.
Tom Collins
I was about to ask if you utilized the same alignment procedure with both arms? As he advised, different alignments are designed to minimize distortion over different portions of a given record.
"You can't know what the "best" is unless you have heard everything, and keep in mind that given individual tastes, there really isn't any such thing." HP
You could probably "fix" those inner groove problems by tweaking the alignment. For example, the much maligned Stevenson algorithm will produce a null point within or near to the innermost grooves. (I own a few vintage Japanese tonearms that were designed for Stevenson, and with those, the innermost grooves often produce the "smoothest" sound.) But this is not to dispute the obvious point that a longer tonearm will give a flatter arc across the LP surface with commensurately less tracking error, on average.
Thanks AudioSoul I will drop back to the 9-9.5 inch tonearm. I appreciate the information.
Richard
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