Why is a rega arm a bad match to a heavy direct drive turntable?

[fletchdirect]

Hi All
Hope everyone is staying well and keeping safe...
Please may I ask this question as have heard it discussed a few times on the forum, but without a real reason why.
The thought of a Rega arm on a Technics 1200, or something like a Toshiba SR-370 has always resulted in forum members going, 'no no no', it will sound crap or it is crap.
Apart from dimension issues and fouling the lid etc - there seems to be a lot of armboards with the rega in mind and I also recall that a technics/origin live rb250 combo first broke out onto the pages of Hifi World as a breakthrough idea with stunning results.
Marco also mentioned that both have the technics 1200 and rega have the same 'sound signature' and our therefore a bad match???
Can somebody shed some light on what this really means and why it is so? i.e. Why are they a bad match? What are the physics of each which makes them lose synergy in your opinion? Is it because the big direct drives have a load of vibration that the design of the rega is bad at insulating against? Other than that, it strikes me as a bit of a witchcraft. I am not expert or experienced enough for myself to detect, but I did notice an improvement is bass tightness and clarity when I swapped the technics arm for a Origin Live RB250 with a Goldring 1042.
I would love to know but all that has been said is that they are not compatible.
Any thoughts? Would really appreciate knowing whats behind it.
Cheers.

[Jac Hawk]

I think the main reason is more to do with the physical incompatibility as the arm sits way too low and as most Rega arms don't have easily adjustable VTA then the setup becomes a bit of a nightmare.

[walpurgis]

I found the RB250 and RB300 dull sounding on the Techie, even minor upgrades didn't help. And as Mike says, the ergonomics are poor.

[Jac Hawk]

I found the RB250 and RB300 dull sounding on the Techie, even minor upgrades didn't help. And as Mike says, the ergonomics are poor.

They work better on SL110's so i'd say the mounting of the arm on the 1210 in part impedes performance, i don't think there's any particular reason why they sound a bit dull they just do

[walpurgis]

I think it's quite likely that Rega arms sound best where they were intended, on Rega decks. :)

[Natara]

I found a Rega 250 and 300 sounded really quite good and both 1210 and an LP12 I owned and are an excellent 'budget' tonearm for those with shallower pockets of course if I had £500+ to spend it probably wouldn't be on a Rega arm but for the money they aren't bad at all.