Creative designs for tonearms

[bogle111]

How about the Nad 5120 turntable with the flat tonearm.




It was made from printed circuit board material & the wiring was copper tracks with electrostatic shielding from hum.
The thing was 1 or 2mm thick, making it incredibly strong in the lateral plane (stronger than a tube) but bendy in the vertical plane - Perhaps not so obviously good, except that the notion that an arm should be rigid is related to the fact that tubes ring when they're excited. If you think about it, some flat fibre-loaded resin isn't going to ring, so does it really need to be completely rigid? The vibrations went down the beam to the counterweight. The counterweight had a hinge, it was spring loaded and also included a paddle dipped into a dashpot filled with damping fluid.

This tone-arm was also available on its' own, for a short time. It could handle some good carts. too. The complete set-up was only let down by the plastic platter and plinth. IMSC it was £109 inc. cart.. There were few issues with the arm, very innovative with well founded principles. Seem to remember it was made Czech Republic? Most people scoffed at it.

[jostber]

The recently released EAT E-Flat turntable:

[morris_minor]

The recently released EAT E-Flat turntable:

Wow. That looks beautiful!

Can it play in other keys, though?

[alfie2902]

I always thought the Triplanar rather an amazing arm.

Very nice arm! I like these though

[MartinT]

The recently released EAT E-Flat turntable

Those headshell holes look a little rough. I wonder how they would hold out with repeated use? Looks like an entire arm swap if they fail.

[MartinT]

Missing piccie there, Alfie.

[The Grand Wazoo]

That picture was not showing for me last night, so I went to the source of it to see what it was. When I came back here, it had miraculously appeared, so I thought Alfie must've sorted out a dodgy tag or something. It seems that wasn't the problem. Anyway, it seems to be a pictuire of a Fidelity Research FR64S - will this one do?

[MartinT]

Sure will, Chris. Lovely hefty arm.

[shane]

Here's one I made earlier that didn't really work:






and one that did:

[morris_minor]

Excellent Shane

Can anyone tell me what the advantages/disadvantages are of S-shaped tonearms compared to straight ones with a kink at the end?

It seems to me that more "modern" arms are straight, whilst the classic stuff uses an S bend. To my mind it's the angle that the headshell has in relation to the groove, and the arc it travels across the record that are important. How the headshell is connected to the pivot is trivial - provided things like resonance are controlled.



Thanks,
Bob