TW-Acustic Arm

Andrew

From my time with the Phantom, I find the 10.5 is a bigger sounding arm with even better dynamics and cleaner bass. You probaly notice that first, with all things being equal. Its sound stage to me is more pinpoint without having imaging that are unrealistic, eg singers mounth as tall as a two story building, but that may be system dependent. The Phantom, I found is very good in its mid range in providing a lot of information, the 10.5 is at least on par with it there.

I do like the tool Bob Graham provides for his arms.

You no longer need a seperate phono cable with the TW 10.5, so that it nice. A very user friendly arm, a least with the TW AC.

It's been almost a year since the last post from Paul. Having just acquired the Raven One, I'm looking at either the TW Acustic 10.5 or Reed tonearm to go with it. Previously in this thread Audioblazer indicated he owned both of these arms. I would appreciate hearing from him or any others, having access to both, what it was soundwise that determined your preference of one over the other. Thank you.

Opus88,

The raven 10.5 is much easier to set up. Sounded great with my dynavector xv-1s. However the tonearm pin a bit too long , making it a very tight fit for my xv-1s. Best combination from the various arm/ catridge combo that I have ie schroeder 2fw/ ortofon, reed/ortofon a90, raven 10.5/zyx omega gold .
Even before burn in & when I first set it up, it thrashed the 10.5/zyx combo. So much so that 1 of my audio friends who is using phantom2/ zyx omega gold, immediate place an order for XV-1T. However I m not comfortable with the supply protractor. I don't really understand how to use it . I used a feirkert & mintlp protractor to set it up
I used my reed with a separate reed tonearm base on my garrard 301 & it was not easy to set up effective length correctly. Whenever I change the VTA, the tonearm tower of reed seems to move ever so slight changing my effective length. It's seems to have the same issues triplanar tonearm has ( no experience with this arm but from my friend with such arm) .

1 thing I have doubt about the raven 10.5 is the anti skate which uses a screw with magnet at the tip of the screw to create a magnetic pull on the tonearm. I wonder how accurate it can be when the magnetic pull loses it strength as the tonearm moves toward the inner grooves. Did asked Thomas , the manufacturer & he told me anti skate is correctly done.
By the way both vidmantas ( reed ) & Thomas ( raven) are 1 of the best in the market. Immediate response & ever willing to answer any questions I have .

Audioblazer, can you confirm the anto-skate does work on your arm? Or simply you just has some concerns on how it works.

If all parts intalled properly on Raven 10.5 arm, I think AS will work. The way it works I believe is that the magnet in the big AS screw will pull the front corner of the bearing house (on the side of armtube), but will push the rear corner. Both push and pull forces on the bearing house will result in AS force as a net effect. I don't know whether a detailed calculation was ever carried out, but in general, when the arm on the outer side, pull force is a bit larger than the push, when the arm is closer to the record label/spindle, the pull might decrease a bit since the front corner is moving away from the Big magnet screw, but the push force on the rear corner will increase since it is moving closer to the magnet. So overall, the average AS force during the LP play might not drastically change that much. But this is only on the ballpark not from calculation.

Unfortunately, somehow the installation of magnets on my Raven 10.5 (bought used from a agon member)is reversed, so I have been puzzled all along about AS on Raven 10.5. What I experienced is not Anti-Skate but Anti-Anti-Skate, the result is over skate which has effect of skipping, channel out of balance (not by much). Waiting to be fixed. The fix is easy though.