Brand New YAMAHA GT-5000 turntable!

[fletchdirect]

https://uk.yamaha.com/en/products/audio_visual/hifi_components/gt-5000/index.html

Apparently due around April 2019, its belt drive and obviously harks back to the days of the older GT series.
BUT, what seems to be the biggest question is that tonearm.....no offset and no anti-skating!!
Price wise I've read everything from 17k $ to 5k €.....time well tell.
Anybody got any ideas on the tonearm??? Last time I saw something like that was on a Vestax / Stanton DJ deck.....purely for 'scratching' !

24032

24033

[fletchdirect]

here is a video of probably a prototype

again, that tonearm!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4Q-C7jIipg

[Ammonite Audio]

An arm like this may seem like technical heresy, but Yamaha are not the first with a straight arm without any offset nor bias compensation - the Viv Lab Rigid Float tonearms have been around for a while, and by all accounts confound the critics by sounding excellent. Maybe bias compensation brings as many problems as offset brings technical benefits (the two are inextricably linked)?

http://www.vivaudiolab.com/Rigid_Float.html
http://www.theaudiobeat.com/blog/viv_labs.htm

[fletchdirect]

well you learn something new every day !!
I mean, these big boys at Yamaha must know what they are doing......plus not a hanpin (Denon DP-A100) in sight it seems!!

[walpurgis]

There's an old saying, 'if it looks right, then it is right' and that doesn't look right!

[Beobloke]

Yamaha actually did the straight arm thing themselves many years ago. The YSA-2 arm that was an optional extra on the GT-2000 series had no offset.

You can see it here on The Vintage Knob’s GT-2000x page.

http://www.thevintageknob.org/yamaha-GT-2000x.html

[Barry]

In using a straight arm (i.e. one without a deliberate offset angle) you are reducing two adjustable arm geometry parameters to one - thus a straight arm will only display zero tracking error at one point only on the record playing surface. And in this case, the effective arm length needs to have an underhang (i.e the effective length is shorter than the turntable centre to arm pivot distance).

A straight arm doesn't need bias compensation as the tangential offset is very small, essentially zero.