by Michael

Brinkmann News out of Munich 2010

The new 9.6″ tonearm bears a close resemblance to the 10.5 tonearm. Various component parts that have performed perfectly in our previous tonearms like the arm tube with the special hard ceramic surface, the headshell, the tonearm lift and also the mounting socket are also used in the 9.6 tonearm. Therefore the 9.6 can be mounted in the same tonearm bases pre-drilled for the 10.5 or 12.1. Will ship in August, retail $3,990

The new Pi MC cartridge seen here mounted in the new 9.6 tonearm on a gorgeous Oasis with a makssar (ebony) plinth.

On the Pi Helmut Brinkmann chose a microridge stylus, which has the best resolution in fine recorded detail, while offering proven reliability. The stylus is mounted on a boron cantilever which in turn drives a copper voice coil. The utmost attention was given to the rigidity of the magnetic circuit to prevent eddy currents which would corrupt the low level output signal.

After eight years in development, the Edison phono stage will ship next month, it has three inputs, each of which’s loading & gain can be adjusted by the remote control. The settings can be stored in memory. It uses vacuum tubes both for the first gain stage as well as for the balanced implementation. Retail $12,990

Finally, Brinkmann have finished their cartridge & tonearm alignment Protractor. This is a precision piece of engineering and while not cheap, should prove very useful. I have seen Helmut use this to set up tonearms and its a doddle. Retail $600

[‘a doddle’ must be ‘Brit’ nomenclature for ‘awesome’ :-)]

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 by Michael

Spintricity, Kharma

We still have plans for the Spintricity magazine… took some time off, and now we will need to port it to a faster server since the server no longer has the bandwidth capable to support it. This will take some time, so… stay tuned.

Meanwhile. we have a lot of Kharma photos and information from Munich, but now we need to put them somewhere else… perhaps this blog. Stay tuned for this to… [well, it is not like we have to tune in a browser… stay URL’d maybe. No. Stay clicked].

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 by Michael

Americans and Hi-Fi

New York Times

“From 2000 to 2009, Americans reduced their overall spending on home stereo components by more than a third, …”

Stupid Americans.

Neli and I talked it over a little, and after thinking more about it later, I think that this is not true for say:

Europe: Growth with Eastern Europe coming on the scene with their need for hi-fi bliss counter-balanced by a likely decline in the U.K. [it is my opinion that the world imitates the U.S., including and maybe especially our bad habits – like not worshiping high-fidelity – and especially countries most like us].

Japan? I would suspect treading water as their economy stagnates.

China: Incredible growth. Hong Kong: a decline from the great heights that once were.

Russia. Steady growth as capitalistic populism gains ground.

This is just speculation. Comments? Many Europeans, for example 🙂 think that the U.S. is just one big pot of gold. It is, but only if you are selling somethin’ that fits on a shelf in Wallmart 😉

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