I hope to find an paralell arm with good bass - to me the difference the paralell tracker made was greater than any other change I have heard including the deck. To the extent I dont think its possible to fairly compare a deck with a paralell tracker to one without.

Sadly noone in the UK stocks kuzma and brinkmann at the same time so perhaps the only way is to take a chance!

Thanks for your reply.

The Lagrange is a lovely turntable, with a bit of a different voicing from the Balance. Yes, some folks do prefer it — I think it’s a bit lighter on its feet, and that the Balance is more authoritative.

I have not heard the Balance with the Kuzma Airline arm but … yeah, I’m as curious as you are. Your experience with the Airtangent does not surprise me. I think that a linear arm makes a huge difference, sonically. And one day, perhaps we will get to make a direct comparison. Brinkmann Audio does offer an arm pod for the Kuzma linear tracking arm.

Lloyd Walker’s arm is only available for his turntable — it’s really not possible to mount it on a different table. It’s simply a wonderful arm — easy to adjust, fuss free, tracks perfectly, and the newer version (the Black Diamond arm) is supposed to be significantly better than the one we have here on our Proscenium Gold. It’s hard to know where exactly the magic of the Walker comes from — how much is the arm, how much is the table itself, the platter, the suspension, the bearing.

Best regards, and thanks for your remarks,
-neli

I use the Brinkmann lagrange rather than the balance (many feel it sounds superior to the balance). I recently heard the BLG with an airtangent arm in place of the 10.5 tonearm that I use and it lifted the performance into the stratosphere - it was a huge improvement - perhaps 30% in subjective terms. This change obviously puts it on a more level playing field with the walker which also has a paralell tracking tonearm but at an overall much lower cost. I havent heard the walker myself but I would imagine that any advantage it has would be due to the walker paralell arm. Have you ever heard the Brinkmann with the walker arm or another paralell arm? I am especially curious to hear the kuzma arm on the BLG.

Regards,

Nick.

Although the Walker stands out from the pack now, I do not always expect that to be the case, and that, even though Lloyd keeps improving the table, there might be, likely be, new tables, like the TT3, that may also stand out from the pack, perhaps farther, perhaps not, it is up to all of our ears to let us know how each one of these little turntable subsystems perform on a relative scale to each other.

Long sentence day. Sorry.

Personally, what I find more interesting about that post, and what has troubled me for a long time, since I wrote it, is whether this is a good methodology with which to judge something.

For example, take a $10,000 oz. of oregano, or glass of wine. Should that oregano, in a bowl of spegatti, stand out and impress the diner with its various and wonderful subtle flavors whose complexity and delicacy surely must delight anyone who tastes it.

Or should it instead be a clear window onto the Essense of Oregano - providing the diner with an experience that once and for all gets them closer to understanding what oregano, the plant, the spice, its history and magic, is all about - but not having much a distinctive taste of its own at all.

Or should it instead be a enabler, providing a clearer window on to what the essense of spagetti is all about, sort of a catalyst for all the otehr spices and ingredients to come together in to something where the sum is greater than the whole - and not having any distinctive taste of its own.

The first two also work for evaluating wine, whereas the thrid would involve the participants who are drinking the wine - the wine being some kind of special facilitator for the, uh, particiapnts getting along with each other better.

As you can see, these ideas are not completely thought through yet.

Thanks,
Dave

;-)