Goldmund Studio - still relevant today?

Harold,
I don't doubt your tale of two tables, but I don't share your experience. Maybe it was learn as you go, but if you put the effort into the Studio as the Delphi, you might be singing a different song. At least that's my experience and I'm not alone with that opinion. Virtually EVERYBODY back then recognized the jump in performance going to a Studio.

You could say it's an unfair comparison with the price difference, but the Oracle was at its best with a SME V and that is/was a pricey arm. I set-up or tuned Delphi with mostly the SME V, and arms like the Syrinx PU3. Yes, I got them to bounce straight and stop on a dime after three bounces. The Delphi MK II is a beautiful table and it sounds quite good if set-up properly.

Even though it's not your experience, IMO the Studio has greater potential. Admittedly, the suspension should be defeated and you need a later version of the arm or a replacement. I never cared for the Groove Isolator, but I guess that to, is a matter of opinion.

I think this sums up relative quality:
http://www.high-endaudio.com/RC-Tables.html

Regards,

The T3F is really bad. The moving Arm smears every detail and it ruins every cantilever pretty fast.
Even when I would get one for free I would avoid to use it.

I am still amazed after 20+ years to see how misunderstood the T3F was. It is an arm of stunning performance, utterly easy to set-up, fully reliable and certainly does nothing bad to the cantilevers only to extract all the music out of the LP's. It works silky smooth with the PL8.
I had the s/n 2020 from 1988 to 2013 on the Reference s/n 2069, never ever a problem, never a broken cantilever.
Of course, as any high performance audio item it had to be optimazed. Problem was Goldmund's greed for cosmetics over technical matter. The problem is so easy to see and yet no user or seller has ever talked about the issue.
Some idio... inside Goldmund decided to place the CW too close to the bearings to keep it hided inside the bridge.
Thus the arm/CW, as such, had no leverage at all. Consequently CW mass must be increased to a crazy 200gr for a 10gr cartridge. This is already a compromise for a pivoted arm but is catastrophic for a tangential. The aluminum/ceramic strip headshell did not help either. What I did, I first replaced the aluminum headshell for a CNC strip made of treated ebony, this reduced the mass at the very tip of the arm by 5gr. Then the most important, I CNC a hard-resin prolongation-insert that was attached to the back of the arm that allowed to set a lighter CW farther away of the bearings. The result is the use of a CW of only 45gr., the option to use the level of damping fluid you wish and a terrific, amazing improve in performance.
I do not know how to upload pictures but I can provide tech. drawings if someone is interested.
You can go to Hammertone Audio (turntable section) to see some pics/explanation. That is (was) my system. Additionally Mr. A. Salvatore understood the problem and posted my explanation in his web-site.
IMO none of the fellows that have always criticized this arm have a tonearm better than a poperly set-up T3F.
To be noted this arm as today has little tech. support and if something happens to the E-Prom or the Zilog CPU it will be difficult to fix.

Regards,

Dear Cabbiendi, Can you say why you think the elongated mount for the CW effects an improvement in sound, apart from the fact that it permits use of a lighter counter-wt. There are two parameters (at least) that would change with this mod: (1) lateral effective mass, and (2) vertical effective mass. IMO, the reduction in lateral effective mass is probably good, and may explain why you've had no problems with cartridge damage. But the vertical effective mass may well have increased with this mod, since the effective mass is a function of the square of the distance from the center of gravity of the CW to the pivot but only a first order function of the mass of the CW. Thus if you've moved the CW 4X its normal distance from the pivot, which is probably close to correct, since you were able to reduce the mass of the CW from 200 to 45 (roughly 4 to 1), that would increase effective mass by 4-fold (16X for the fold difference in CW to pivot distance times 1/4 for the reduction in weight). That might be bad for all but low compliance cartridges. Perhaps that's what you use.