Used Morch DP-6 or modified Origin Live Silver?


Hello vinyl-philes,

Thanks largely to this forum we've shattered the piggy bank and will soon be the recipients of a Teres 265 + Shelter 901. Now I'm stuck for a tonearm. TWL and others warn against unipivots for this cartridge. We understand and agree, so we've come down to the two arms mentioned above. Either one will just about bust the budget, so going up in price is not viable at this time.

Morch DP-6 (used, $800 + phono cable)
- offers adjustable azimuth (does it matter?)
- offers adjustable vertical damping (does it matter?)
- horizontal damping controls stiff cartridges (right?)
- ease of setup? ease of use? reliability?

OL Silver with TWL's mods ($800 + $1.79 fishing weights)
- no adjustable azimuth (does it matter?)
- no adjustable vertical damping (does it matter?)
- TWL's HIFI mod controls stiff cartridges (right?)
- ease of setup? ease of use? reliability?

Has anyone compared the sonics of these two arms with a low compliance cartridge? Your observations would be especially welcome.
dougdeacon
Tom, I hope that you sent a certified letter to yourself with a drawing of the HiFi mods. Could be grounds for litigation.... ;-)


Tom,
That is hilarious! Are they going to let you keep all that stuff as compensation for "borrowing" your idea? I'm looking forward to your impressions. David may be on to something there.

Chris
Hi guys. I just got off the phone with the dealer and they said that they are not trying to duplicate my idea, but that it made sense to improve that aspect of the arm, and they did a combination of aesthetic improvement and functional improvement by changing the end-cap nuts to this small weight system. And they did like the idea.

To be honest, it is not nearly the significant horizontal mass change that my HiFi system is, and I don't think that it will really be competitive with my mod, due to that. It's sort of like, "HiFi Lite". But I think that it is a step in the right direction for them to improve that area of the arm. I'm sure that it will be better than the original Silver arm because of this, at least a little bit. I was told that there is no price increase related to this change.

So basically, I'm not pissed at anybody about this, and I'm kind of flattered that they thought well enough of my ideas to incorporate this into their arm design. Heck, now that one of the big names has validated my design theories, maybe it could open some doors for me elsewhere.

I made the idea available to anyone that wanted it, for free, on the thread about my mod. I guess they thought that it was good enough to use on the factory arm design. In fact, I'd say that it is quite evident that they did.

So, all you HiFi users, you were right all along, and you got in on the leading edge of tonearm design, by being a little adventurous and putting it on your arms. I congratulate all of you on being true pioneers in analog arm systems.

I've got some other stuff up my sleeve, that I'm working on. Don't worry about that. And it's alot bigger than a tonearm mod.
You must be kidding! On the day that I found out that my tonearm mod just got picked-off?