LOL.

Andre,

The detrimental effect of the detachable headshell is minimal, trust me, and completely outweighed by the effect of important modifications that have been carried out to the arm (Cardas arm rewire, fluid damping, brass counterweight balance, metal alloy headshell, etc) which allow it to compete sonically with any fixed headshell 'hi-end' tonearm up to £1k.

Yes, I've compared it to the various Regas (Origin Live modded and others), Hadcocks and SME Series M2s of this world, and they're not any better I can assure you (just different in presentation). The bearings on the Technics arm are also smooth and of good quality. It's actually very well engineered. So, mate, worry not about detachable headshells if the arm as a whole is a well-sorted and thought out design

Plus also, if I bought a tonearm with a fixed headshell I wouldn't be able to use an EMT XSD-15 or an Ortofon SPU, would I? And I definitely want to own both of those cartridges at some point soon! Eventually, my cartridge 'portfolio' will consist of both of those plus my various 103s, all set-up in their own headshells, which is quite a nice selection of cartridges to have, and only achievable if I've got an arm with a detachable headshell

Of course I could shell out serious money on a really top-notch arm if I wanted and no doubt it would be better but that would completely defeat the purpose of me buying the deck in the first place. Anyone can chuck money at hi-fi and buy the most expensive bits, if you can afford to, but getting maximum sound-per-pound and owning something different that's a true giant-killer takes a bit more thought and intelligence

SP10s? I love them, but my modified SL-1210 gets me about 95% there (I've heard SP10s in comparison) without any worry about things going pop and then not being able to replace the parts!

Marco.

P.S Steve (Sastus) I'll come back to you later. There's quite a lot to discuss with the points you raised.