Yea, when I think of the hours spent cutting and drilling armboards this is like a breath of fresh air, but is it worth it? Looks kind of strange.
After reading a couple of reviews, I think this might be killer. Having the cantilever on the plane of the pivot might be better than a little less alignment error. Speaking of alignment, here you have a one point underhung alignment.
Skating is also dramatically reduced, so torsional affects are also. Here's the formula for skating from Stereo Times (above):
Side force at any particular tonearm position is given by the formula
µW*tan(α+?), where
µ is the friction coefficient between the stylus and groove,
W is the stylus tracking force (or VTF)
α is the tracking error angle and
? is the offset angleTracking error angle is relatively small compared to offset angle and here offset is zero.
I would guess that the longer arm (13") is more desirable. It would minimize alignment error, but Stephen Yan says the shorter one sounds better. He think it's due to reduced resonances. Wild stuff.
The alignment point is a little to the inside of center groove. I wonder if one of those disco tables with a straight arm could be aligned like this?
neo
