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UPDATES ... my first handmade 12' phono tonearm

Let's face the truth : after comparing drives , 32bit & 24bit dacs with or without my preamp , draw the best from the tda1541 , there is not much I can do for reading CD.
So why not get back to the roots and have fun with phono ?
For my 1st try in diy , I made myself a 12' tonearm with the lowest possible budget ( 15euros without the cartridge ) as these beasts are very expensive on the market.
The base is a bed foot , the whole pivot is a matching furniture wheel ( with metal bearings , please ) , the arm itself is a knitting needle and the counterweight/antiskating combo is a curtain thingie with 2 pieces of chinese allen screws.

I chose the allen wrench tips for their large choice of weight and fix them on the curtain thing head over heels in order to make counterweight AND antiskating, while the whole thing is adjustable with a simple screw for exact ( well, more or less ) stylus pressure.

The cartrige is screwed in the arm with just one point on the beveled tip of the needle which is parallel to the record , in order to adjust the angle it makes with the arm . R and L wiring is separated to avoid any kind of diaphonia. A crude piece of metal from a computer now has a second life as a finger lift .

Here is the cartridge I used . It's a nos JVC I bought when the whole techonology was really obsolete and dealers sold their stocks at very low prices.
It's quite a good MM cartridge , frankly at the level of a shure M75.

Overall I am very happy with my no-waf tonearm and satisified with this 1st try, the critical thing being to position the whole thing in order to avoid offset distortion. Tone is very good, but I have always doubt you can actually 'hear' tonearms, while I think 12' is an improvement over universal 9'....

BACK TO THE ROOTS

...and I just noticed I have put the tonearm in reverse ! The stylus was playing AGAINST the record !
Weird , it did not changed the sound....all that I can say it's it works that way...maybe a good solution for worn out stylus ?
Anyway, I put it back the classic way. :

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