String suspension vs. uni pivot or gimball tonearms

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All cartridge isolation methods from the arm and/or the base (plinth) are tuning methods to get a desired sonic signature. One can tune the system to get bright, lively, forwarded music but lacking depth. The other extreme is laid back with mid low and low frequencies emphasis with some depth perceptions. There are always compromises due to tonearm designs and turntable configurations. A small tweak like a thin spacer between the cartridge and headshell makes a noticable difference. Plastic tubing wraps around the arm wand reduces the arm wand resonances and lower noise background. One gets some good sonic improvements for a while then moving on to other tweaks to improve more or just different sounds. That is the beauty of vinyl playback.
 
You may see my wooden tonearm posted on diyaudio.com with cartridge mounted directly to the wooden headshell. I prefer to let the sonic energy dissipating along the wooden arm wand. I heard alot talking about vibration converting to heat. I don't think it's an efficient conversion. The residual sonic vibration from the stylus may cause interferences with the new incoming sonic vibrations. Nude cartridge allows some sonic vibration dissipating into thin air. Trial and error is the fun of vinyl playback.
 
One can use a small piece of graphite from a golf driver shaft as a spacer between the cartridge and head shell. Graphite/carbon fiber has excelent vibration damping property to improve sound. One should get better image/focus of music resulting from lesser sonic interferences at the cartridge.
 
Your tone arm is not a musical instrument unless you drop it and are making musique concrete. Metal arms don't necessarily make music sound metallic. Wooden arms don't necessarily make music sound warm.

I thought the whole idea was to try to reverse engineer the record cutting process. The cutter head isn't made of wood, and it isn't suspended by strings. And I seriously doubt record cutting machine manufacturers use words like harmonious in their sales pitches. Well, I hope they don't.

I prefer unipivot design because its bearing surfaces are constantly loaded, and are thus both extremely stiff, and extremely low friction. They are stiff in the direction where the tonearm must be; in resistance to getting dragged forward by the record. Record cutting machines are stiff in all directions. Unfortunately the reproduction system must make allowance for tracking and warpage, and must maintain a small yet constant downward force while doing so. These forces are applied through the careful control of the moments of inertia of the tonearm. These are the 2-15hz parameters. What you do from 20hz-20khz is where personal taste may lay, but I would not ever sacrifice the basic mechanics of the system.

I think Unipivots can do this the most simply, and string suspended tonearms, the worst.

Sincerely
 
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