Tonearm: Phantom vs. 4 Point vs. 10.5

I love my phantom supreme - much better than previous version. But if I ha a TW table I would want the TW arm. System synergy.

There is a difference between the Mint Lp and TW alignment plate. TW has both Loefgren and Baerwald points. After talking with Yip, he could make the Mint with either, but suggested to use Loefgren. So I complied.

The Mint Lp and TW Baerwald points are approximately 0.5 mm different with the Mint about 0.5mm more forward at both null points. The Mint of course for those who have used it, allow a much more precise placement at the null point. It takes great patience and a few breaks for cold beverages to get it right.

I agree on the TW P2B tool. I am about 0.2-0.3mm off right now but am living with it. At some point I will dial it in perfectly but I'm just enjoying the music right now.

Graham Phantom has a very clever little tool to help setup P2S. It's a plastic cap on the spindle. A hole on the head shell to fit into the tip of the cap, level the arm, and P2S is set.

While setting up Phantom, I noticed a hole on the TW 10.5 head shell as well. Verified with Thomas @TW, it will set P2S to 251.2mm if the hole on the TW 10.5 is centered on the spindle. Unfortunately, TW is on metric but Phantom is not. So the tip on the Phantom cap will be just a bit larger and wouldn't fit in the TW hole. Still a big help to setup P2S on TW 10.5 arm.

Overall, Phantom is a very user friendly arm compared with TW. It provide easy repeatable adjustments on azimuth, vta with the spirit level, and anti-skate. Arguably the easy swap of arm wand as well. But adding damping fluid to the pivot cap is really hard to gauge.

TW can offer adjustments as well but no markings. TW VTA mechanism is pretty good, nice touch and feel. But TW AS is quite problematic to begin with for the arm I bought, which had an noticable impact on the sound quality. Luckily the problem is fixed easily.

Thanks for the respons :-)

What i get from your anscers is that, Phantom i easy to setup and a good match to the Raven One. But TW10,5 is a better match, but diffucult to setup.
Is that right?

Pierre

Kdl, what was your problem with anti-skate and the TW arm? Just curious..