DIY linear tonearm

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#21
Colin's arm and the Cantus each have 4 contact points so they will "skate" up and down instead of pivoting on the tube or inside the tube, hence avoiding the "teeter totter" effect of conventional tonearm. Such scheme said to be more sonically dynamic and from Colin's report, he has succeeded.

Thanks for bringing your design to the forum. Mechanical linear arm is something I always want to try but never have time to do it but glad someone is bringing it to fruition. Keep those pictures and ideas coming! 🙂
 
#22
The Taiwan tonearms are from member Riverland. Anybody still have a Rabco?
My Rabco is gone, but I was always fascinated by linear tonearms. Is the Opus Cantus tonearm available commercially? Are the majority of DIY linear tonearms air bearing? If you made a DIY linear tonearm please post pictures here and talk about your tonearm.
 
#23
Directdriver has got it bang on, the inverse same as the Cantus 🙂. I was trying to post a video of it tracking a very nice outer warped record, it does so like a champ and is almost comical to watch!. I've put it through some good torture tests and it tracks well. I've noticed too that with a linear arm off center pressings really don't matter as they would a pivoted arm, it's only bad warps that show any anomalies in pitch, IMHO there are more off center pressing out there than badly warped vinyl these days


Colin
 
#24
opus3 table/arm

audiostar said:
The Taiwan tonearms are from member Riverland. Anybody still have a Rabco?
My Rabco is gone, but I was always fascinated by linear tonearms. Is the Opus Cantus tonearm available commercially? Are the majority of DIY linear tonearms air bearing? If you made a DIY linear tonearm please post pictures here and talk about your tonearm.
Click to expand...

Yes the table and arm that Bo Hansson designed and built are back in production and are available. Some refinements have been made. Best regards Moray James.

continuo1
 
#26
Directdriver,


I'll match that photo and offer a similar shot 🙂.

Colin

One thing that also seems to stand out with this arm is deep tight and beautiful tuneful bass, I have a modified rb250 with low slung weight and it can't even come close to the musicality of the bass now. One thing that always drive me nuts about that arm was its bland highs and upper mids,almost grey sounding.
 

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#27
Been around for a long time

here is a photo of an idea which has been around for a long time and has be commercial a number of times though I cannot recall names other than some current Clear Audio versions. Not sure who made this one (probably clear Audio) but the photo shows the concept and it lends itself to all manner of variants. The other photo with the underside shot was a production arm. I love the simplicity of the idea. Best regards Moray James.
 

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#30
moray james said:
here is a photo of an idea which has been around for a long time and has be commercial a number of times though I cannot recall names other than some current Clear Audio versions. Not sure who made this one (probably clear Audio) but the photo shows the concept and it lends itself to all manner of variants. The other photo with the underside shot was a production arm. I love the simplicity of the idea. Best regards Moray James.
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The first photo is of a Aura turntable, a Czech hifi maker.

I have this one.
 
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#34
Well the take over was in house

audiostar said:
Continuo The Opus3 Continuo turntable with Cantus tonearm.
Who are these guys that took over from Bo Hansson? Anybody has this turntable and tonearm?
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the gentleman who picked up the ranes for Bo was the man who was building all of Bo's wooden tables, a friend and audiophile himself. So in a sense production has stayed in the family so to speak. Best regards Moray James.
 
#36

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#38
I would imagine that given the application the surface smoothness and roundness would not be near as good. Not to say you cannot obtain equally well finished ceramic but at a Much higher cost what do you have that will cut something as hard as the best carbide or tungsten.? Have you ever tried to cut a tool steel drill bit or to drill a hole in steel that hard? Carbide is off the scale harder. Glass is easy to cut and way harder than the hardest tool steel so why knock yourself out? Best regards Moray James.
 
#40
I love the quote from this site about Clearaudio:

"Hey, Peter S! Invent something yourself"

btw: Clearaudio modified this arm a little bit (better cable mainly), called it CAL 3 S, fitted a Clearaudio Alpha System and sold it with an acryl chassis as Clearaudio Evolution turntable in '97. (They still used that silly scale) It seems pictures of the 'classical' Evolution turntable are hard to find... Clearaudio likes to behave like they never used the CAL3S, although it's quite obvious that the actual 'Tangent' arm is nothing more than a redesign of the AU/RA arm. Hey, Peter S.! Invent something yourself ;-)

So see some pics of the 'Evolution' here.
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An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.


An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
 
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