Opinion on Oracle tonearm please.

[nghiep]

I just bought an Oracle tonearm. Please post your experience of this tonearm. I noted that the VTA adjustment similar to VPI and Tri-planar tonearms. When did Oracle came out with this arm? It seems that there was some looseness in the VTA mechanism when the lock nut was loosen for VTA. This looseness in the VTA column can change the VTA after tightening the lock bolt. I wonder if the VPI and Tri-planar exhibit the same problem also. Thanks

 

[sreten]

Hi,

as far as I know Oracle do not make tonearms.

Are you talking about the rebadged SME ?

🙂/sreten.

 

[nghiep]

This is the picture of the arm.

 

[James D.]

That is a Graham unipivot.

Hmm well maybe... think my first thought might not be correct. Its a unipivot and it has several Graham like design features including the headshell shape - but it's missing the lateral counterweights... not sure now...

James

 

[nghiep]

It is a gimbal bearing arm. I bought it without the needle bearings for the vertical plane motion. I used needle bearings from another arm and it worked fine.

 

[Nanook]

it sux...really

It is the Oracle "Prelude" tonearm. I hope you paid very little for it.
As the owner of an Oracle turntable, I can tell you that it is inferior in every single way to later SME/Oracle 345 tonearms. (mine works well with the SME 309).

somehow they felt they could design their own, but simply were not upto the task. Many Oracles here in western Canada were equipped with Rega RB300 or Sumiko Premier "MMT" or "FT3" tonearms, the Preludes really never worked or more importantly didn't sound right.

 

[James D.]

Well there you go...

Thanks for the update - one more to add to the database.

ciao

James