Features: Tonearms

Ortofon has long marketed a tonearm made in Japan to its specifications. For the recently introduced 12" AS-309R, the latest revision to Ortofon's tonearm, Ortofon provides few specifics other than "130 redesigned components.... crafted with unparalleled mechanical precision and advanced engineering". The company doesn't divulge what any of those parts are, or how and why they were redesigned.The additional 'boilerplate" marketing... Read More

In the recent review of the Pro-Ject EV0 12 AS I promised a follow up covering the straight pipe carbon fiber, aluminum sandwich EVO CA arm and here it is. There's no point in repeating here all of the background information and all of the variables related to these two arms, so please read the review at the above hyperlink.But it makes sense to repeat a bit of it: Both of the 12" arms under review have an effective length of 304.8mm and a 291.6mm pivot to... Read More

Most companies introduce new product lines. At High End Munich a few years ago, Pro-Ject introduced a new product wall— of tonearms. The variety appeared overwhelming until closely examined, after which the proliferation made well-organized sense. There were a few basic models, but available in three lengths and in a variety of finishes. A bit blurry, taken from a video but you get the idea! These are but a fewAs for why Pro-Ject decided to introduce a separately... Read More

We live in a clickbait, hype-infested, hyperbolic, anything goes commercial world—even when it comes to medicine. You can buy a brush-on cure for "toe fungus". Of course, there's no such thing as "toe fungus". There's toe nail fungus that no brush on liquid cures but these telemarketing geniuses have conflated the two and are probably raking it in from people who think they can now brush away gross looking, thick yellow, fungus-infested... Read More

Reviewing an elegant analog system from Clearaudio.

This is a years-in-the-making saga, but it’s not as long as Design Build Listen has been manufacturing The Wand tonearm. Inventor Simon Brown introduced it in 2011. A sample arrived here more than a few years ago and a review commenced, but shortly thereafter, the New Zealand built arm’s American distributor exited, orphaning the review. Unbeknownst to me, a short time later a new distributor entered and delivered a The Wand arm to my dear, late friend Art Dudley, who... Read More