Uni-Protractor Set tonearm alignment

Dear Peterayer: That is only an " exercise " that you could do it when appropriate to you.

Regrads and enjoy the music,
Raul.

Dear Dertonarm.
Spring rain kept me from chores so I did some reading on Agon looking to learn. I read through this Uni thread from the start and came across a post you made on March 11 that is puzzling to me.

Specifically you said.

“the linear tracking tonearms - in any incarnation we have seen so far from Rabco, Denessen, Goldmund, Versa Dynamics, Air Tangent, Eminent, Forsell et al -displayed mechanical issues, periphery problems and stability problems which did always crippled their undisputed tangential advantage.
…

Most audiophiles who ever ventured into tangential tonearms later moved to tonearms with 11" or more effective length to approach kind of "best of both worlds".
…

I have had all the above named tangential tonearms in most all their incarnations in my system in the past 30+ years.”

Wow – quite a statement. Two questions.

1) Can you tell me who “we” is when u say "in any incarnation we have seen" ? Is that an audiophile club?

2)
I have owned the ET 2.0 and now 2.5 arms for the past 5 years so your statement caused me some despair. Is there an unknown problem I am not aware about? Would you please be so kind to enlighten me for the “Eminent Technology arm specifically” that you owned - about the stability, mechanical, etc… problems you had.

I found alignment tools provided with these linear arms get you to about 75% of their potential. The rest is trial error tweaking by ear. Personal discussions with Mr. Thigpen have confirmed this. You need to experiment and try different settings. See what u like / dislike. Once past the initial tool settings it is all FEEL, ADJUST, LISTEN. Definitely not plug and play but once set up – you can forget about it without issues I have found.

All problems I came across in my earlier days with the ET arm, and in talking with other folks about linear tracking arms in general - other than pump/air problems – easily fixed - have always been related to actual user errors and the lack of "total knowledge" about the arms and the way they work – thus leading to improper setup. After 5 years I am still learning about my ET arms and how they work.

I look forward to hearing back from you when it is convenient on "your ET specific problems" as you say u owned the ET. You did not say whether it was the 2 or 2.5 version.

Lastly does the Uni package contain any tools that would be useful for lining up linear tracking arms ?

Thank you. Chris

Dertonarm

Allow me to return the rattle that you have thrown from the pram:

You said:

you don't really want me to tell you what additional breakdown torque is and why it does of course influence the skating force.

If I didn´t wish to know I wouldn´t have asked. I´m always willing to learn something new and if you have something new to say, I´m willing to hear it. It is just that you seem unwilling or afraid to actually say anything at all - commercial reasons?

You said

If you think skating force is just a phenomenon of friction and downforce - fine, certainly no problem with me.

I didn´t say that. A neat attempt at misrepresentation.

You said

If you muse about the model and draw yourself a good and precise force vector model of a pivot tonearm, you'll figure out.

I have done. A long time ago. And since then I have re-considered my original thoughts and am willing to continue doing so in the light of new facts.

You said:

I did suggest starting a "antiskating thread" - I didn't say I want to start it nor did I say I want to participate in it.I have no questions regarding skating force in tonearms.

But a lot of talk and precious few answers, it seems.

You said:

Regarding the UNI-Protractor and it's "universal" use.
Apparently you haven't worked with it so far and haven't understand it's principle either. Otherwise none of the comments in your last two posts would have been made.

I think you´ll find it was I (not you)who briefly explained earlier the way your protractor works. I don´t know if you´ve done this elsewhere, but you don´t do it in your audiogon advertisement. Neither do you credit, or even mention, Dennesen at all in your ad.

You say I don´t understand the principle you used. I understand it only too well.

cheers

.

Dertonarm

Again, since you were the one who brought it up, you said:

If you think you can do better - go ahead design it.

I already have - as soon as I saw the pics I knew you had missed the basic principle of the Dennesen, and, by extension, the underlying concept, which goes back to Percy Wilson in 1924.

Anyone who understands the principle could, with a bit of thought, see how you could have made your protractor more universal, more precise, and easier to use, without compromising the existing features (and you can admit having used it for 25 years, yet haven´t seen this!)

You said:

So far your comments have shown little more than poor judgement, a fairly high aggression and very little understanding of the subject.

Yes, bad judgement in expecting anything other than obfuscation.
Aggression? Scarcely.
Understanding? I can only promise to try and be more understanding of your explanations.

You said:

I welcome your attempt to put your name on the wall again and to prepare the road for yourself for a soon-to-be return to the audio market.
No problem with me - as far as I am concerned you are certainly welcome.

Thanks, spoken like the true salesman you are.

But, unlike yourself, I have no plans to market my add-on to the Uni-Protractor, to compensate for its non-universality.

(Nor my new 12" FR66-killer zero antiskate adjustable effective length, dynamically balanced, irregular-pseudo-elliptical headshell arm, (or even my headshell mounted miniaturised preamp which uses the power gained from negating various mysterious breakdown torques to enable a single run of fine cable from the cartridge to the power amp...))

You said:

I might react to a post by you from time to time only, but so far very few actually did ask for an answer or a comment. Most were simply lacking content and seriousness.

Luckily my last post had two straightforward questions for you to answer, so you might start there. As you must have missed one of them, and misunderstood the other, I´ll repeat:

in what way do the Reed, Talea and Schroeder differ from other arms? The Talea and Schroeder appear to have a facility to alter the effective length,(as does any other arm with a slotted or movable headshell) and they have a facility to alter the headshell angle. What is the difference between this and altering the angle in a normal headshell?

The Reed has a normal slotted headshell except for the model with its little azimuth adjusting device.

What´s the difference? I would honestly like to know.

And I am intrigued to know what are these mysterious additional breakdown torques which the above arms don´t have.

Cheers again

Hi Chris,
last topic first .... yes, there is also an UNI-template for tangential tonearms.

1) "We" was referring to the audiophile community - including me.
Kind of universal - in the sense of "we, the people" - i.e. not a club nor a circle of friends, but all audiophiles in the past 4 decades.

2) With mechanical issues I meant that tangential tonearms do ( with various intensity however ) put the suspension of a cartridge's cantilever to considerable stress. Even in a servo controlled tangential tonearm there first has to be a declination from the tangential right angle to move the tonearm.
It is not an apparent immediate issue, rather a long term problem.
I worked with tangential tonearms for 11 years.

There were and are cartridges which are mechanically better suited to withstand the mechanical stress ( especially Supex SDX-1000, original small body ZYX) and a great many which are not.

I didn't really did run into "problems" with neither the ET2, ET 2.5, Air Tangent 2B, Air Tangent Reference nor Goldmund T3F.
I all had them on my turntable(s) and they all did perform quite well and some showed potential for great sound.
I used them with high tech air supply ( Jun Air "Troll") and adjustable pressure and air volume.

The ET 2.5 still today is a best buy.
If mounted with the right cartridge ( low body weight, solid suspension ) and if you do not ask for the last punch, dynamic, air, color and detail in the lower 2 registers of the audio frequency band.
The ET 2.5 improves considerably with increased air pressure up to a certain limit. It does deliver very good bass with a lot of "body" - but not quite the quality I seek.

It is a very good tangential tonearm and if I were looking today for a tonearm in the $1k to $2.5k range, it would still be high on my list.

Cheers,
D.