The Arm For All Reasons?
By Roy Gregory
While reviewing tonearms is no more difficult or challenging than reviewing any other product, tonearm comparisons are a totally different kettle of fish. Each product type presents its own difficulties, from speakers or amplifiers that are somewhere beyond ridiculously heavy, to naked cartridges that threaten to break if you so much as handle them. But assuming that you’ve got the right armboard and tools, mounting a tonearm is normally a question of preparation and patience, rather than anything more demanding. The problems start when you try to conduct any sort of close comparison…
Sandwiched between a turntable and a fragile cartridge, while offering an almost unprecedented level of micro-alignment and set up options (at least if you include cartridge set up in the process) dismounting one arm, mounting another and then reinstalling the cartridge is never going to be quick and simple: or if it is, the results will likely be meaningless, differences in performance swamped in the variability of the set up. Even decks with the option to mount multiple arms, introduce their own variables, with different arm mounts offering a different location relative to the motor and, potentially, a very different mechanical interface.
So, when a reader contacted me and asked if I’d like to sit in on/help out with a tonearm comparison he was about to conduct, you might think I’d run a mile. Except that, not only was he talking about auditioning both arms on his GPA Monaco v3.0 (with its interchangeable, slot in arm mounts) but with two Air tight Opus 1 cartridges to hand, he was offering the possibility of swapping arms in a matter of minutes (while preserving continuity of cartridge set up). But the cherry on the icing of this particular cake was the identity of the arms in question: the Kuzma 4Point 14” and a pre-production sample of the 9” SUPATRAC Nighthawk – an arm that me and a host of others are just itching to get our hands on. After an auspicious debut in Munich this year, it was obvious that the Nighthawk was a bit special. But how special is an open question, given the lack of any stable point of reference in a show situation. So, throw in a familiar system in a familiar room, full of components I regularly spend time with and this was too good an opportunity to miss. Getting up close and personal with possibly the most interesting tonearm to hit the market in years, doing it in the context of a ‘table/tonearm combination I live with, doesn’t constitute a review – or even close to a review – but as a precursor to that review it’s a fascinating introduction.
Given that SUPATRAC (capitals because it is an acronym*), are currently victims of their own success, working hard to gear up and meet demand for the Blackbird, for which there’s a considerable number of back orders, you might think that promoting the up-market Nighthawk is probably the last thing on their minds. Yet ironically, the lead-time on a Nighthawk is in the order of a couple of months, while Blackbird orders could easily run to three times that. That reflects the relative price of the two arms and thus the numbers sold. But, just in case anybody who has ordered a Blackbird fancies upgrading that order to a Nighthawk, SUPATRAC are offering a £1000 discount on the price of the more expensive arm if you take that step…
Details, details…
Apart from the presence of a pair of the Air Tight cartridges, the thing that made this exercise practical was the quick-change armboard on the Monaco v3.0. This is held in place by three allen bolts – not that much different to many other armboards. But, driven by the impossibility of incorporating a second arm-mount into the minimalist footprint of the Monaco, Alvin Lloyd of Grand Prix Audio set out to provide a solution that wasn’t just quick, it also retained the essential geometrical consistency necessary to maintain performance and make swapping arms a practical proposition. If you are wondering what I’m getting at, just try loosening the mounting bolts on your turntable’s armboard and see how much play it introduces into the system. Then retighten them and set about realigning your cartridge, because you’ll definitely have messed with its set up!
