Best material to tonearm

[sudhirbhosale]

Hi all
Thinking to build tonearm. Want to know which material is best. Read on net about good qualities of wood tonearm over metal.
Any views? In case of wood, what wood? does shape matters? i.e. hollow tube vs solid round rod vs strip. Low density is good or high density?

Thanks

 

[jls001]

You have a design in mind?

My understanding is hard, dense tonewood are best. By tonewood I mean wood that have good musical properties.

I've read of people using exotic hard woods like cocobolo, wenge, Australian jarrah, Brazilian and Indian rosewood (sheesham), bubinga, ebony, and non tropical hard wood like cherry, maple, etc.

At the other extreme, some use very light wood.

Shape wise, tubular seems most popular.

Do read up on Nanook 219 DIY tonearm as that's probably the most approachable for us. If you're adventurous, there is the excellent Schroeder clone.

Then there is the Well Tempered tonearm clone which is probably the easiest to DIY.

My two wooden arms use rosewood and teakwood, respectively.

To add: lots of DIY arms use carbon fiber arm tubes taken from arrows. Aluminium tubes from arrows are also popular.

 

[sudhirbhosale]

You have a design in mind?

My understanding is hard, dense tonewood are best. By tonewood I mean wood that have good musical properties.

I've read of people using exotic hard woods like cocobolo, wenge, Australian jarrah, Brazilian and Indian rosewood (sheesham), bubinga, ebony, and non tropical hard wood like cherry, maple, etc.

At the other extreme, some use very light wood.

Shape wise, tubular seems most popular.

Do read up on Nanook 219 DIY tonearm as that's probably the most approachable for us. If you're adventurous, there is the excellent Schroeder clone.

Then there is the Well Tempered tonearm clone which is probably the easiest to DIY.

My two wooden arms use rosewood and teakwood, respectively.

To add: lots of DIY arms use carbon fiber arm tubes taken from arrows. Aluminium tubes from arrows are also popular.

Thanks lot jls,
I have design in mind. Also inspired by your DIY post

reed.lt - Wood vs. The Rest: Testing Armtube Material
Very nice experiment with conclusion - woods with closest-to-perfect characteristics are Redcedar, Pernambucco and Panzerholz.

One visual conclusion - If you look texture vs chart, you will find the wood with fine grain is not showind that good results.


Here they tested various wood. But not tested aluminium vs wood vs carbonfibre etc.
So still my question is unanswered - which material is best.

 

[jls001]

I heard a fairly highly rated carbon fiber arm and didn't like it much.

Aluminium and various alloys are common arm materials, and most of us have heard them in one form or the other.

That was why I chose wood for arm wand.

Also, I'm personally more comfortable with working with wood compared to aluminium or its alloys.

So the choice boiled down to "which wood?"

I chose teak wood as it is very easily and very cheaply available. Rosewood was a second choice, but it's available on order only and costs about four times as much as teak wood.

If you can get the exotic woods you mentioned, most of them should work quite well. Equally critical as the arm tube material is the tolerance of the bearing.

Panzerholz may be unobtainium in most parts of the world, I think. And I would prefer it more for making platter or plinth than tonearm.

 

[rsud]

The critical attributes for a tone arm are stiffness and anti-resonance.

For this criteria wood would seem to be a poor choice for material for a tonearm.

A hollow arm with a damping material inside or coating outside would seem to be the best choice.

I would suggest a plastic of some sort. But it would take some experimentation to find the right combo.

The other critical factor would be the bearing for the arm pivot.

 

[jls001]

For this criteria wood would seem to be a poor choice for material for a tonearm.

A hollow arm with a damping material inside or coating outside would seem to be the best choice.

I would suggest a plastic of some sort. But it would take some experimentation to find the right combo.

Wood seems highly favoured by many very high end arms like the Durand Telos ($25K, Durand Tonearms - the Telos), or Frank Schroeder (Referenz SQ Info).

Many arms use some sort of damping inside the arm tube, irrespective of the tube material.

Personally I've never heard of plastic used as tonearm tube (outside of 3D printed arm tubes which uses, I think - some form of plastic to print).

 

[Naturelover]

The Scheu top end tonearm is also of wood.
Tacco Tonearms Scheu Analog

 

[rsud]

Wood seems highly favoured by many very high end arms like the Durand Telos ($25K, Durand Tonearms - the Telos), or Frank Schroeder (Referenz SQ Info).

Many arms use some sort of damping inside the arm tube, irrespective of the tube material.

Personally I've never heard of plastic used as tonearm tube (outside of 3D printed arm tubes which uses, I think - some form of plastic to print).

Yes quite nice and well but for a homemade arm I doubt if our DYI'er here is going to go out and source exotic stiff wood and treat it with specialized anti resonance lacquers.

A stiff plastic tube filled with modeling clay is where I'd start. But a balsa wood chopstick is an easy enough starting point as well. Also need to consider the compliance of the cartridge that will be used and whether that points to a high mass or low mass arm.

 

[sudhirbhosale]

Yes quite nice and well but for a homemade arm I doubt if our DYI'er here is going to go out and source exotic stiff wood and treat it with specialized anti resonance lacquers.

A stiff plastic tube filled with modeling clay is where I'd start. But a balsa wood chopstick is an easy enough starting point as well. Also need to consider the compliance of the cartridge that will be used and whether that points to a high mass or low mass arm.

How much should be goal for tonearm effective weight (only wood stick part) we should target for 1. High compliance cartridge and 2 for medium compliance cart?

Thanks

 

[jls001]

How much should be goal for tonearm effective weight (only wood stick part) we should target for 1. High compliance cartridge and 2 for medium compliance cart?

Thanks

Read this page: Tonearm/Cartridge Capability

(But I've read other opinions different from the masses mentioned in that link).

BTW, the effective mass includes weights of head shell, screws, washers and nuts (say about half a gram combined) besides the arm tube mass, so arm tube alone cannot be considered for calculating effective mass.

Also, unfortunately you can't use a weighing scale to measure effective mass. You have to play a test record and observe its resonant frequency and then calculate the effective mass of the tonearm via the resonant frequency.

For theoretical calculations with examples, see this: http://www.theanalogdept.com/cartridge___arm_matching.htm