Hi all ...
Been swamped the last couple of weeks and I missed a few good threads in the interim.
Here's another take on the damping thing ... arriving at the same "conclusion" (do we ever conclude anything?) as Doug has without actually having done the heavy lifting which he has.
To my ears, the Triplanar is not the least bit nervous of a tonearm - not at all in need of damping. I say this in comparing it with my trusty Schröder Reference over a range of high quality cartridges. The Schröder's damping adjustment is the simplest and most easily reversible of any arm I know. Because you can easily go back and forth, the sound of an under or overdamped setup is plainly audible.
My previous experiences with silicone have left me underwhelmed, but I'll be the first one to admit that I have not paid heavy dues with this parameter. I've taken a binary approach to it:
* add some damping
* too dull? back off by 50%
* still too edgy? double it
And so forth.
The arms in question were the Mörch DP-6 and the Graham 2.2 (Speedy, you may have persevered more where I gave up prematurely). Now (and this goes back a while), I remember dialing in a mild bit of damping in an old Audiocraft unipivot, but it's been too long to comment about this intelligently.
In general however, I've found myself ultimately going back to no damping. If forced to choose, I'll take an occasional "honk" over a consistently boring presentation every day of the week. Live music occasionally does this (honk), and it certainly doesn't put you to sleep (a trance yes, but to sleep, generally no).
I feel fortunate to be working with two of the best tonearms on the planet. Since the subject is the Triplanar however, I think it's relevant for the time being to not open the conversation to the entire universe of tonearms.
Someday, I'll try damping the Triplanar it in order to confirm my suspicions. Who knows? I might have to eat my words, but I doubt it.
If I were considering trying damping on a Triplanar, I'd start with something much thinner than the supplied silicone oil - perhaps with mineral oil, which also has the advantage of being easier to clean up.
Now, when someone asks me a question about damping (especially in the context of the Triplanar), I have to put my "Raul hat" on and ask them about the rest of their system. I wonder if the individual is responding to other nasty resonances (either electrical or mechanical) downstream?
One example ... I've mentioned this on a few posts, but it bears repeating. The sound of a phono stage with a slow circuit (slewing distortion) sounds very similar to inner groove distortion and mistracking. I've heard several highly regarded phono stages exhibit this characteristic. You will be utterly amazed at how a simple change to a more competent phono stage can clear up what you considered to be mistracking. This is one case where I can easily see someone looking to silicone damping for a solution that lies elsewhere.
Cheers (and back to work),
Thom @ Galibier
