I have always wonderd, why bend the arm? Is there any reasonable explanation as to why some arms are bent?
Of the TT's I have owned, only one had an S-shaped arm, the AR. I also had an ERA with a straight arm. I could not hear any difference in tracking between these two. But that was long ago, around 1985 when I went digital and stayed digital until last Friday. I could no longer look at my old collection of vinyl unplayed for almost 20 years.
So I bought a Pro-ject 1 Xpression. It came with a straight carbon-fibre arm and an Audio Technica AT-95 installed. I thought I would find a good cartridge later.
I'm deeply impressed with this TT, even with the AT-95. It can play my most warped record. None of my others could. It has to be the lightweight carbon-fibre arm. My reasoning would be that an S-shaped arm would have a higher moment of inertia while a straight has the lowest possible.
Geometrically, none of the arm shapes track better than the other but the straight will have a lower inertia.
Maybe I should do something with the old AR like a new arm? I no longer have the ERA unfortunately.
Of the TT's I have owned, only one had an S-shaped arm, the AR. I also had an ERA with a straight arm. I could not hear any difference in tracking between these two. But that was long ago, around 1985 when I went digital and stayed digital until last Friday. I could no longer look at my old collection of vinyl unplayed for almost 20 years.
So I bought a Pro-ject 1 Xpression. It came with a straight carbon-fibre arm and an Audio Technica AT-95 installed. I thought I would find a good cartridge later.
I'm deeply impressed with this TT, even with the AT-95. It can play my most warped record. None of my others could. It has to be the lightweight carbon-fibre arm. My reasoning would be that an S-shaped arm would have a higher moment of inertia while a straight has the lowest possible.
Geometrically, none of the arm shapes track better than the other but the straight will have a lower inertia.
Maybe I should do something with the old AR like a new arm? I no longer have the ERA unfortunately.
Hello,
we made draweings before machining, of course. I some time i will publish the most important ones on my site www.krishu.de
so far, there are only pictures.
But I think it really is not necessary to have drawings. What is so difficult to think about? There is not just one proper solution. Everyone of you might have seen a tonearm so he/She can imagine, which diameter, length of pipe etc. can be used. Size and shape of magnets has been discussed here before. Weight and Size of counterweights can be figured out ... and apart from all that: we ourselves just thought and tried, but did NOT simply copy. So there may be mistakes or less good details in our solution. Would you like to copy them as well?
Cheers
Christian.
we made draweings before machining, of course. I some time i will publish the most important ones on my site www.krishu.de
so far, there are only pictures.
But I think it really is not necessary to have drawings. What is so difficult to think about? There is not just one proper solution. Everyone of you might have seen a tonearm so he/She can imagine, which diameter, length of pipe etc. can be used. Size and shape of magnets has been discussed here before. Weight and Size of counterweights can be figured out ... and apart from all that: we ourselves just thought and tried, but did NOT simply copy. So there may be mistakes or less good details in our solution. Would you like to copy them as well?
Cheers
Christian.
copy....sounds like a bad word
Nope, i have no intentions to copy your tonearm, but sure intend to copy the good parts of any tonearm. Thats the way to get forward. If we all went back to the invention of the wheel every time we did something, we sure would end up with something close to stagnation.
The point of what i wrote was to make this a group effort. Since the goal is more or less the same for all of us.
Cheers
Magura
Nope, i have no intentions to copy your tonearm, but sure intend to copy the good parts of any tonearm. Thats the way to get forward. If we all went back to the invention of the wheel every time we did something, we sure would end up with something close to stagnation.
The point of what i wrote was to make this a group effort. Since the goal is more or less the same for all of us.
Cheers
Magura
Hello Magura*,
I think I see the point.
But we have rarely something to show which can not clearly be seen anywhere. What is interesting is the source of magnets, strings etc. This has been discussed exactly here.
Apart from that I don't refuse to show my drawings. As I hope I said before, I will publish them on my website within next weeks/months. First, I have to edit them.
The most knowledge considering special schroeder tonearm topics I got from the Patent, which obviously and unfortunaltely is only available in German. There is enough description about materials etc.
Apart from that Schroeder specific things you can look anywhere for senceful tonearm pipe, hedshell, counterweight etc. shapes and materials a.s.o.
We used a carbon pipe of 1/2" diameter, stuffed with balsa wood. The rest is mainly bronce, the magnets are 15×5mm N50 neodymium, the "polplatten" are steel and the same dimensions.
Cheers
Christian.
*does that mean the breaks company Gustav Magenwirth Bad Urach?
I think I see the point.
But we have rarely something to show which can not clearly be seen anywhere. What is interesting is the source of magnets, strings etc. This has been discussed exactly here.
Apart from that I don't refuse to show my drawings. As I hope I said before, I will publish them on my website within next weeks/months. First, I have to edit them.
The most knowledge considering special schroeder tonearm topics I got from the Patent, which obviously and unfortunaltely is only available in German. There is enough description about materials etc.
Apart from that Schroeder specific things you can look anywhere for senceful tonearm pipe, hedshell, counterweight etc. shapes and materials a.s.o.
We used a carbon pipe of 1/2" diameter, stuffed with balsa wood. The rest is mainly bronce, the magnets are 15×5mm N50 neodymium, the "polplatten" are steel and the same dimensions.
Cheers
Christian.
*does that mean the breaks company Gustav Magenwirth Bad Urach?
Hello magura,
you can find the link in this thread as well as on my website.
Patent
I did use 12mm pipe because i used it for my unipivot before and because some others use it (e.g. Clearaudio, we call it Klirraudio here). It is not really heavier that 10 mm pipe but much stiffer. But one has to dampen it, we will do that using balsa wood.
Frank schroeder suggests different wood types as e.g. ebony, which is available from Thomas Scheu www.scheu-analogue.com for example.
Cheers
Christian.
you can find the link in this thread as well as on my website.
Patent
I did use 12mm pipe because i used it for my unipivot before and because some others use it (e.g. Clearaudio, we call it Klirraudio here
). It is not really heavier that 10 mm pipe but much stiffer. But one has to dampen it, we will do that using balsa wood.Frank schroeder suggests different wood types as e.g. ebony, which is available from Thomas Scheu www.scheu-analogue.com for example.
Cheers
Christian.
There is no problem in removing the rod after curing...
coat it with vaseline or similar, and give it a few twists after curing.....
A thin plastic tube, straw or similar, with a rod inside for strength during placing, is another possibility.....
Actually, -I am very interested in this thread,--
sometime ago I finished the bearing for a Teres,- with good result, and is now planning for a plinth. I have several pieces of heavy 50 mm MDF, but I wanted to something better. Just struck a deal with a guy running a water jet cutting plant for corian, and also PVC, which will probably end as a laminate of PVC and alu for the platter.
coat it with vaseline or similar, and give it a few twists after curing.....
A thin plastic tube, straw or similar, with a rod inside for strength during placing, is another possibility.....
Actually, -I am very interested in this thread,--
sometime ago I finished the bearing for a Teres,- with good result, and is now planning for a plinth. I have several pieces of heavy 50 mm MDF, but I wanted to something better. Just struck a deal with a guy running a water jet cutting plant for corian, and also PVC, which will probably end as a laminate of PVC and alu for the platter.
thickness of the arm
Hello ,
I would like to start to build a nice tonarm and this thread has made me really enthousiastic.
Does anyone know the thickness (diameter) of the Palisander or ebony tonarm ?
In this way it is possible for me to 'calculate' the rest of the dimensions of the tonarm.
Thanks
Hello ,
I would like to start to build a nice tonarm and this thread has made me really enthousiastic.
Does anyone know the thickness (diameter) of the Palisander or ebony tonarm ?
In this way it is possible for me to 'calculate' the rest of the dimensions of the tonarm.
Thanks
Hi Christian,
I understand.
What is your main reason to use 15 x 5 mm magnets instead of 10 x 5 .
The problem of 'hanging over' or difference in VTF increases with the increase of the diameter of the magnet. One small point would be ideal .
The bigger the diameter of the magnet , the critical will be the ajustment of parallelling the two magnets.
Dr. K
I understand.
What is your main reason to use 15 x 5 mm magnets instead of 10 x 5 .
The problem of 'hanging over' or difference in VTF increases with the increase of the diameter of the magnet. One small point would be ideal .
The bigger the diameter of the magnet , the critical will be the ajustment of parallelling the two magnets.
Dr. K
This is my realization.
http://it.photos.groups.yahoo.com/g...tine/lst?&.dir=/Shroederclone&.src=gr&.view=t
http://it.photos.groups.yahoo.com/g...tine/lst?&.dir=/Shroederclone&.src=gr&.view=t
Hello All,
I have not visited the site for a while now and have not previously contributed to this thread, but wanted to do so now having built my own Schroeder look-alike.
See picture here
Before I go any further, I would like to say an enormous thank you to Frank Schroeder for the inspiration and for all of the help and encouragement I see him giving to this forum, not many designers/manufacturers would do that.
I have to admit that I basically reverse engineered my 'copy' by studying the reference design and 'guestimating' the dimensions based on 'known' elements such as headshells and cartridges, and then by trial and error. If you visit my website at Mynetplace you can see that there are two revisions of the arm bearing.
The whole thing started with a Goldring Lenco rebuild which, once completed, was begging for a decent arm to lift the performance up to what I reckoned it could aspire to. There are not too many options for the Lenco since the low platter height rules out many possibilities due to lack of VTA adjustment. Linn arms (almost any arm can be fitted) are good but tend to go for silly prices on Ebay, so having been outbid too many times to mention, I decided to 'bite the bullet' and try the Schroeder design for myself.
As can be seen from the photos, my arm differs substantially from the original 'Reference' in that the bearing assembly is mounted through the deck via the inner Pillar (as opposed to the outer one in the original). This is due to the fact that I wanted to retain the Lenco plinth (metalwork part) intact without hacking it to pieces. The original arm 'hole' is therefore utilised for the Schroeder arm by machining a pillar with two steps, one to prevent the bearing pillar from falling through the deck, and the other to support the bottom plate.
The outer pillar (brass) also has a step at the bottom to retain it above the lower bearing plate, together with three Allen 'grub' screws to retain it in position. The upper and lower plates, and the inner pillar are made from a material called Fortal which is basically a heat-treated Alluminium Alloy, it's a wonderful material for this type of thing as it is easy to machine and polishes up beautifully once completed.
I must admit that the Armwand itself was donated to me by a very generous forum member over on the Lencoland site, it is beautifully made out of four pieces of wood, ebony for the top and bottom, and Cocobollo (not sure about the spelling here) for the sides. The four piece construction neatly removes any need to drill a hole through the middle once the wood-turning is finished.
I am unsure of the strength of the magnets I have used as I bought them off Ebay, there are no holes in them as I dont use the magnet for securing the thread, instead, I run the 'spare' length back to the back-end of the arm and secure it with a rawlplug and screw !!!. This might sound crazy but it works well and allows the thread to be replaced very quickly and easily, a major design consideration in my book. The magnet in the arm is a press fit, 'secured' with locktite so that it can be removed if necessary for a thread change, the magnet in the bearing pillar is glued in with araldite. Magnet size is approximately 3/8" (approx 9.52mm) for both the top and bottom, thickness is about 6mm.
The counterweight was nearly too much for my little lathe (Emco Unimat 4) to handle due to the diameter (nearly 2" as I recall), such was the weight requirement. In the end I 'finished-off' the arm with a static counterweight (small one) and a larger moveable counterweight which seems to work fine.
I must admit to being disappointed at first but this was quickly resolved by adding a decent cartridge to the mix. The Benz L2 MC cartidge (I also splashed out and bought the matching Benz Lukashek PP1 phono stage) makes for a grin factor that I hope all analogue addicts can experience one day.
All in all, I am very pleased with my arm/deck combination, it was by no means cheap as I had to by a lathe and some other machine tools for the project (of course I still have them for use on something else ....) but it was a very gratifying experience to hear the end result after some 5 months of work and re-work.
Hope you like it .........
Mike
"Life is uncertain, eat dessert first"
I have not visited the site for a while now and have not previously contributed to this thread, but wanted to do so now having built my own Schroeder look-alike.
See picture here
Before I go any further, I would like to say an enormous thank you to Frank Schroeder for the inspiration and for all of the help and encouragement I see him giving to this forum, not many designers/manufacturers would do that.
I have to admit that I basically reverse engineered my 'copy' by studying the reference design and 'guestimating' the dimensions based on 'known' elements such as headshells and cartridges, and then by trial and error. If you visit my website at Mynetplace you can see that there are two revisions of the arm bearing.
The whole thing started with a Goldring Lenco rebuild which, once completed, was begging for a decent arm to lift the performance up to what I reckoned it could aspire to. There are not too many options for the Lenco since the low platter height rules out many possibilities due to lack of VTA adjustment. Linn arms (almost any arm can be fitted) are good but tend to go for silly prices on Ebay, so having been outbid too many times to mention, I decided to 'bite the bullet' and try the Schroeder design for myself.
As can be seen from the photos, my arm differs substantially from the original 'Reference' in that the bearing assembly is mounted through the deck via the inner Pillar (as opposed to the outer one in the original). This is due to the fact that I wanted to retain the Lenco plinth (metalwork part) intact without hacking it to pieces. The original arm 'hole' is therefore utilised for the Schroeder arm by machining a pillar with two steps, one to prevent the bearing pillar from falling through the deck, and the other to support the bottom plate.
The outer pillar (brass) also has a step at the bottom to retain it above the lower bearing plate, together with three Allen 'grub' screws to retain it in position. The upper and lower plates, and the inner pillar are made from a material called Fortal which is basically a heat-treated Alluminium Alloy, it's a wonderful material for this type of thing as it is easy to machine and polishes up beautifully once completed.
I must admit that the Armwand itself was donated to me by a very generous forum member over on the Lencoland site, it is beautifully made out of four pieces of wood, ebony for the top and bottom, and Cocobollo (not sure about the spelling here) for the sides. The four piece construction neatly removes any need to drill a hole through the middle once the wood-turning is finished.
I am unsure of the strength of the magnets I have used as I bought them off Ebay, there are no holes in them as I dont use the magnet for securing the thread, instead, I run the 'spare' length back to the back-end of the arm and secure it with a rawlplug and screw !!!. This might sound crazy but it works well and allows the thread to be replaced very quickly and easily, a major design consideration in my book. The magnet in the arm is a press fit, 'secured' with locktite so that it can be removed if necessary for a thread change, the magnet in the bearing pillar is glued in with araldite. Magnet size is approximately 3/8" (approx 9.52mm) for both the top and bottom, thickness is about 6mm.
The counterweight was nearly too much for my little lathe (Emco Unimat 4) to handle due to the diameter (nearly 2" as I recall), such was the weight requirement. In the end I 'finished-off' the arm with a static counterweight (small one) and a larger moveable counterweight which seems to work fine.
I must admit to being disappointed at first but this was quickly resolved by adding a decent cartridge to the mix. The Benz L2 MC cartidge (I also splashed out and bought the matching Benz Lukashek PP1 phono stage) makes for a grin factor that I hope all analogue addicts can experience one day.
All in all, I am very pleased with my arm/deck combination, it was by no means cheap as I had to by a lathe and some other machine tools for the project (of course I still have them for use on something else ....) but it was a very gratifying experience to hear the end result after some 5 months of work and re-work.
Hope you like it .........
Mike
"Life is uncertain, eat dessert first"