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Today an audiophile friend gives me the above mentioned and pictured arm.
It is complete except it is missing the base where the piller would slide in and lock.My friend thinks that can be somewhat easily made. I have an Nottingham Interspace w/Interspace arm and my office table is my older Moth Alamo aka Rega P2 with Rega RB 250 arm. I guess my question is: Would it be worth replacing any of these arms with the Keith Monk or should I sell it? Thanks for any input.
Follow Ups:
Everytime these KMAL mercury posts start, I really begin to wonder about the outpouring of entirely ridiculous "cautionary" advice about the chemical hazards involved.Most people live in utterly toxic, newly built formaldehyde soaked structures, lit by flourescent lights, with poor to zero fresh air, eat absolute garbage so adulterated its not clearly food until the advertisers say so, and yet- here we go, this tonearm is a health hazard.
Get a life.
Jonathan
PS- Same Environmental Design Consultant who is cleaning up the Walter Read Medical Center for the US Government gave me an old Honeywell thermostat to replenish my supply of that high toxic poison, mercury.
Fluorescent lights contain mercury. While working for the US Navy broken lights had to have special covering to prevent spills from breakage. It was not so much for toxicity as that mercury in contact with other metals can create fractures in their crystalline structure, weakening their structural integrity.I wonder about your advocating adding more possible toxicity to an already, as you point out, toxic environment. Using a KMAL arm is not a matter of necessity, like some laboratory instrumentation and other devices. There are many other arms on the market, many with superior performance attributes. As one poster already stated, his experience with the KMAL arm suffered because of the oxidation byproducts which floated on the surface of the mercury eventually deteriorating the contacts.
Think about it: a potentially trouble some arm, possibility of health issues, long term (incidentally, I've seen x-rays of a child's abdomen who swallowed mercury, interesting to see the globules in his intestinal tract, and he apparently suffered no serious consequences), so why bother?
I've always wanted a KMAL arm but simply to study, never to really use.
Stu
NT
I would mount it and display it on a wall. Not only is the mercury a potential environmental hazard, a fact that the importers at the time denied, much to their discredit, but IIRC the metal in the contact pins would gradually dissolve in the mercury. Hate to say it, but really a POS as a design regardless of how it sounds. Someone once said that KMAL got out of more designs than many companies sold, or something like that. The only KMAL design that is a classic is their record cleaning machine, and that is because it was designed by Percy Wilson.
The cable on the arm is likely past it's sell-by, why not go for a complete rewire, and loop around the bearing like many modern arms?Regards
Colin
Didn't answer the original question - probably not much/any benefit over the arms you are using, but it would be an easy drop-in arm replacement for a Lenco 75 project.Fwiw
Regards
I admit I'm not partial in this, as I own the arm, with multiple wands, but have not deployed it yet. I bought them for my Decca carts.Still, I did due dilligence. I've a friend who does toxic waste cleanup and showed him this arm. He was really laughing, that anyone would think that amount of mercury would create a problem unless you drank it, started playing with it, etc.
You may or may not like the arm, but as a health issue, its a non issue.
Jonathan
my age I've played with liquid mercury as a kid, smearing it on silver coins to get them really shiny, and what ever. Still, if I had kids and a warm environment, that's one risk less I'd take. The other issue is where are you going to buy the mercury? Sales have been limited (EPA and OSHA). IIRC, there are four chambers in the KMAL arm that needs filling. Covering the mercury with oil would certainly retard the evaporation but I would guess that a minute amount fill creep up the electrodes dipped into the mercury and rise above the oil.
I have a pound of mercury, obtained from a retired dentist. I found out why he gave it to me. It costs a fortune to dispose of (legally). Even though it is in it's original glass bottle from the laboratory, I was quoted as high as $5K to dispose of the product, a ridiculous sum in my book.Stu
If you use a typical low output moving coil, you have no problem. The mercury has high resistence and should only be used with normal output moving magnets.
It is interesting because it uses a mercury bath to make up the connections from the wand to the leads out. For that reason, a lot of guys are afraid of them. Still, I think it is pretty damned neat.
...MadHatter!There is one small drawback to open mercury baths - the fumes do bad things to your brain (over time, of course). Maybe you could use it until you start hearing homicidal voices in your head and then sell it to the next guy?
Pete
You just need to get the EPA to declare your house a superfund site and they'll hand you tens of millions to clean up the place. You just sell the arm and pocket the change :P
...the key to using such devices would be to not stand too close to them. I imagine that once the tonearm is mounted that the risk would be minimal, however. Nonetheless, mercury can be bad news in the wrong environment.
Well if you do use the mercury fill, I suppose the EPA will do a mighty good job of cleaning up in your room, at least once they find out about it. I would pass on the use of such an arm, although I always wanted one for curiosities sake and I do happen to have a pound of mercury....You wouldn't want the mercury vapors created in a warm environment.
Stu
It occurred to me that it might be possible to "lock in" the mercury by adding a layer of some other fluid on top, like silicone oil, in such a fashion that the mercury would still be able to make contact, so that it could serve its intended purpose. That way, the fumes would be held captive, assuming the arm's contacts continued to remain in the mercury bath.
Although your idea of topping the mercury with something like oil might work to keep the fumes in, it would also render the arm useless.After the wells are filled with mercury, the arm wand is placed on top of the upward facing male pivot. The wand portion of the arm has four pins which are submerged into the four mercury baths. If the mercury had any type of oil floating on top, the moment you placed the wand in place, the pins would become coated with oil as they passed through it and would no longer conduct a signal.
I used to own one of these arms. Even the oxidation "scum" which formed on the surface of the mercury would eventually cause a loss of signal from one channel or the other. Cleaning would always restore the signal, but it was a pain, not to mention the health concerns.
to keep the mercury from oxidizing. Mercury used to be used in some aplications as a mirror but had to be covered for long term use.Jim N
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