[hurdy_gurdyman]

I'll have a wooden Grado tonearm in a couple of weeks. This is the older original one without all the fancy adjustments. I'm not getting this because of how stellar of a performance it may give, but rather to fulfill one of my desires from my younger days. I always admired the looks of wooden tonearms, and wanted either a Weathers or a Grado. I'll mount this on my Rek-O-Kut Rondine B-12 along with my Black Widow (the other arm I lusted for back in the 70's).

My question would be, how well should this arm do with my Grado Blue, and if I someday can afford to move to a MC, like a Denon 103 maybe, will it be OK with it? Also, what about the lack of anti-skate? I'm really not sure at all just how this ancient arm will perform. Any experience with it out there?

Dave  aa

[Wayner]

Can you post a picture of the arm when you get it Dave? I think I saw one on sneebay a while ago but can't remember the design (brain cell loss).  aa

Wayner

[hurdy_gurdyman]

Wayner,

Here's a pic from Decware forum from the guy I'm getting it from on his table. Scroll to the bottom.

http://www.decware.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1191391900/15#15

Dave aa

[TheChairGuy]

I saw someone on ebay offering hand-made cherry tonearms now long ago....I haven't seen him in awhile.  They looked nice.

Those Grado wood tonearms are much sought after.

Joseph (and now John, his nephew) are great believers in underdamping cartidges for best sound...they use wood as their natural damping agents instead of rubber (synthetic or otherwise) internal in the cartridge.  So your Grado Blue should sound nice with the Grado woodie tonearm of yore.

Personally, I think fluid or electronic damping of your tonearm is a premium step for getting all that the Grado's have to offer.  I'm not sure wood, alone, either as cartridge body of tonearm choice will critically damp the powerful Grado's adequately...especially the newer Prestige cartridges (like the Blue) which are a helluva' lot more dynamic than the Z, G or other series proceeding it.

Still, Dave the Forum 'Ho , I think it'll sound pretty sweet on your ROK 

[Listens2tubes]

http://www.vinylengine.com/library_model.php?make=Grado&selected_model=Laboratory%20Series has the instruction manual for the arm. My dad has the original Grado Laboratory Series Turntable with the Laboratory Series Tonearm. I mounted a Grado Platinum for him last November. We adjusted azimuth, VTF and VTA with some effort due to having to reach under the table to loosen and tighten the adjustment. All very worthwhile. Soon we're going to break it all down to clean and lube the whole assemby. I'll take pix.

[hurdy_gurdyman]

I already seen those instructions. They appear to be for the newer version of the arm and are not applicable to the older one, which is quite different.

Thanks anyway for trying.

I managed to find someone who sent me copies.

Dave