Alternity: bamboo as an arm tube

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Long bird bone....

Don't know if anybody has tried bamboo but it was mentioned in the thread above about paper arm tubes. I should think tha a well dries and then sealed bird bone would be excellent. Hollow very strong stiff yet with flex qualities (not brittle so well damped) and designed to be light. The ultimate carbon structure with a resonant harmonic structure the same as the bones in your ear. Easy to saw drill and bonds with epoxy or white glue, You could use a chunk of other bone to make the head shell. The rare and exotic bird bone tone arm could be made from ultra hard bird tooth, but hen's teeth are hard to find (so perhapd we will have to settle for beak). The hollow cavity of the bone could be stuffed with bread (just like at thank's giving) to provide stuffing er damping. Dip the whole thing into dilute laqure several times to fully seal and case harder the whole thing. You know this thing just might fly.
I say this tongue in cheek but I do think that it would be an excellent method for buiding a great sounding tone arm. I think that due to a bone's necessity to bear torsional stress that it youle be a more rigid tube than a length of bamboo which while designed to grow tall and straight does not need to deal with torsion in the same way. Regards Moray James.
 
Hey Chow,

I did see somewhere a tonearm made from Bambo- It was made in Japan but I can't recall the manufacture name.

It should be be an exelent material: both light and stiff.

I'm also planning to try it in the futur.

Good luck
IK
 
Once saw & heard a DIY 16" bamboo arm on a modded Garrard 301....V.V.Good. In fact I have the counterweight..about 30 ozs. It was a unipivot and had an early Kondo Audionote Io cartridge, which I also own.

I have some 6 section pieces of bamboo which I salvaged from a fly rod maker. I will try a 12" unipivot with a graphite headshell and, in a few months, report back!
 
I made a bamboo arm back in the 80s for my Thorens. Just replaced the stock metal one. I sure liked it. 🙂
Also tried reed, which was "maybe" better. It was straighter, anyhow. And filled with pith.


Of course my father was one of those guys back in the old days who used bamboo needles on 78s.
 
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