Well-Tempered Golf Ball?

Schipo,

Given that you've owned WT products in the past, do you really believe the WT tonearms are easy to set up? I bought your Well Tempered Record Player, and found the WT arm incredibly tweaky compared to any fixed bearing arm.

David

David nice hearing from you. I agree with you that the WTT arms are somewhat tweaky, but over a short time things start to snap into place and the table becomes very stable with a long period of time. I hope and I'm sure that the new table from WT is much less and according to many a breeze to setup and a large improvement in performance. My only other complaint was with the early arm's fragile tonearm cartridge clips, so lets hope that this has been addressed. I have no problem excepting that there are better tables out there. But it seems that Linn as a following of religious fanatic's that like to shout everyone down with how great their table is. When in all actuality, it was bye passed in sound quality over 20years ago by other tables.

Bill Firebaugh had a prototype a year or two ago when he spoke at our club, the Pacific Northwest Audio Society. The prototype also had a golf ball and I thought it was a joke too. I've had a couple of WTT in the past and was really intrigued listening to him and his ideas.
The prototype sounded very good. I was really impressed. I found the arms of the past were finicky as well.
I look forward to getting one in our room to test.

To add a log to the fire, I spoke to a dealer who said that the arm has no adjustable overhang, and that Firebaugh has developed an arm geometry that is unaffected by imprecise alignment!!!!!!

Wow, that is a new one on me. But I totally believe it. I used to own a WTT for many years. It was fantastic for the price, though taking a bit of time for the arm to settle each time during set up.

Firebaugh's work speaks for itself. If I didn't own a Raven One, I'd most likely buy the Amadeus.

(Just don't ask me what the WTT to R1 jump in quality was like, unless you have the money to afford the R1)

Emailists, Do you truly believe the dealer who told you that the WT tonearm is "unaffected by imprecise alignment"? If so, I have some herbal remedies to sell you. He was correct in saying that there is no (easy) adjustment for stylus overhang, because the headshell has two discrete holes in it, not slots in which the cartridge can move forward or rearward to fine adjust overhang. I guess this is a perfectionist approach, but it is a pain in the arse when you want to align your cartridge properly (at least on the WTT Reference). The only way to do it is to loosen the nut that affixes the vertical shaft of the tonearm, which is located on the underside of the tt chassis, then twist the shaft on its axis. Unfortunately it is almost impossible to re-tighten that nut without altering the adjustment by at least a tiny amount. The propaganda about immunity to imprecise alignment reminds me of their earlier claim that the (original) WT tonearm had "no bearing".