Spock15
I currently own an ET2, Naim Aro & Hadcock unipivot and have just sold off my Bluenote Borromeo ( Titanium tubed unipivot ).
I hear a crisper articulation of the leading edge with all three unipivots. It's not large. The Aro is better in this regard than the Bluenote & Hadcock. I do agree with you that effective mass, both horizontal and vertical contribute to the "squarewave".
With regard to the high horizontal mass the standard ET2 has a very high horizontal effective mass as standard ( 25g plus the weight of the cartridge ) compared to a pivoted arm.
Richardkrebs has advocated adding 60+g of horizontal mass by adding lead to the bearing spindle and removing the decoupling mechanism of the counterweight. With the ET2 the decoupling of the counterweight is part of the strategy to keep horizontal mass not too high.
Bruce Thigpen has measured, not theorised, actually measured on the ET2 a 6-12db lift in bass response when increasing the horizontal effective mass by 30g ( removing the decoupling ). From what I have actually heard, in a real system, since I have owned an ET2 from the mid 80's, increasing the mass slugs the sound and robs the music of musical pace and timing. Most of the contributors on this thread ( Frogman, Slaw, Ct0517 & myself )have found big improvements when carefully tuning the decoupled counterweight, as predicted by Bruce's testing.
By the way I still own a Dynavector 501 which has a very high horizontal effective mass, and whilst the bass is quite punchy, the musical timing, soundstaging, and resolution is well down on both my Naim Aro and Fidelity Research FR64S ( yes I own 2 of these as well ).
I currently own an ET2, Naim Aro & Hadcock unipivot and have just sold off my Bluenote Borromeo ( Titanium tubed unipivot ).
I hear a crisper articulation of the leading edge with all three unipivots. It's not large. The Aro is better in this regard than the Bluenote & Hadcock. I do agree with you that effective mass, both horizontal and vertical contribute to the "squarewave".
With regard to the high horizontal mass the standard ET2 has a very high horizontal effective mass as standard ( 25g plus the weight of the cartridge ) compared to a pivoted arm.
Richardkrebs has advocated adding 60+g of horizontal mass by adding lead to the bearing spindle and removing the decoupling mechanism of the counterweight. With the ET2 the decoupling of the counterweight is part of the strategy to keep horizontal mass not too high.
Bruce Thigpen has measured, not theorised, actually measured on the ET2 a 6-12db lift in bass response when increasing the horizontal effective mass by 30g ( removing the decoupling ). From what I have actually heard, in a real system, since I have owned an ET2 from the mid 80's, increasing the mass slugs the sound and robs the music of musical pace and timing. Most of the contributors on this thread ( Frogman, Slaw, Ct0517 & myself )have found big improvements when carefully tuning the decoupled counterweight, as predicted by Bruce's testing.
By the way I still own a Dynavector 501 which has a very high horizontal effective mass, and whilst the bass is quite punchy, the musical timing, soundstaging, and resolution is well down on both my Naim Aro and Fidelity Research FR64S ( yes I own 2 of these as well ).