Ttttt, what are the technical issues in tonearm design?
How about someone asking TW that question .....
Its about pivot tonearm design here in general and whether a new product tries to address some of the questions or maybe all.
The Linn Ekos SE does have a very serious price tag too - indeed.
However - I quit making any comment about any Linn product in he late 1980ies and won't break my rule. I will neither comment any Linn product nor do I communicate with any proud owner/admirer of Linn components.
But the answer lies in a direct - even an only visual one - glance to the two tonearms.
Both are of comparable "complexity" and both face and therefor should "address" - as any pivot tonearm should... - the very same technical issues and demands.
Now the core question arise whether those issues were actually detected and understood.
Thats where in our mother language "sich die Spreu vom Weizen trennt" - or that's the way the cookie crumbles....
To illustrate the point please look close at 2 long time contenders for top-tier in pivot tonearm design - both are around for more than 20 years now in their various versions and incarnations - the Graham and the Wheaton/Triplanar.
Their designers both tried from the very beginning to address several issues they had realized existed and were key steps on their way to create a great tonearm design. They both detected many other small issues and modified and evolved their designs over many years.
Getting better and better in a long struggle for optimizing.
Two tonearms I both had in various versions side by side with other great designs of the art.
I have great respect for both of them - I do prefer the Graham design due to its consequence in attention to detail and the Triplanar sadly lost its father due to the run of life all too early.
Both however were belonging to the handful of great pivot tonearms 20 years back and did hold their place ever since to this very day.
Why?
Because their designers tried hard and went new ways which to some extend were their very own.
Two very different approaches which both tried to took care about very similar questions in design, mechanic, energy transmission, force vectors and periphery.
Reading a comment like that the new tonearm in discussion here "is clearly superior to .." one or both of those proven designs, only shows to me that the author of those lines has either
a) no clue what he is talking about
b) a special way of hearing which is all his very own..
c) a very poor and limited set-up I do not want to learn about...
d) taken some funny - if very effective - pharmacy...
The co-designer of the 10.5 said in this thread he is looking forward to more lessons in analog from me.
I told him that there are enough lessons out there to learn from before asking for more.
There are great tonearms already out there.
Designs which stayed and survived the hardest and most painstaking test of all - the test of time.
All issues in pivot tonearm design have already been addressed - but never in one single component.
Some did succeed in many points - none in all.
Thats all my critic is about - if a new component is hailed like King Arthur's return to this sphere of existence (and with a price tag further announcing it...) I expect to see more than the picture of a white ? Raven on its bearing block cover.
