Flat tonearm?

[Rybeam]

Right you are Nat, sorry I got off track. Cogito, is the NAD table the one you were thinking of ?

 

[iLUVanalog]

Does anyone recall a rather unique turntable that came with a flat tonearm. From the early eighties or so? I seem to remember that it was about as thick as a circuitboard and instead of wires in the arm, the conductors were etched onto the arm.

It just came to my mind, that's all.

It was an early NAD turntable.

 

[danj]

I remember the NAD turntable very well. I never bought one but a friend owned one and it worked and sounded like a good turntable should. The tonearm looked odd but it worked. They sold them in Salem at a salon that is now long closed.

 

[Cogito]

Right you are Nat, sorry I got off track. Cogito, is the NAD table the one you were thinking of ?

Yeah, it sure looks like it. At least the one with the wooden base. I just remember reading about it in Stereo Review or High Fidelity many years ago. I'm going to start stalking Ebay and such to see if I can find one. I've got an Empire 300ME cartridge (Inexpensive, but lovely sounding) sitting around doing nothing

 

[Arkay]

Tres bizarre! I can't recall ever seeing that table, but sure would like to hear one.

Frankly, I have a few doubts about the wisdom of the theory vs. construction. Even a flexible arm like that has its own resonant frequencies, and will not "reflect" accurately all the changing frequencies (resonances) that would be transmitted into it when playing actual music. Some, yes, but some more than others. The result would not be a perfectly-cancelling, "rigid" arm, and I'm skeptical that anyone could make it so. Still, there is something to the theory, and as with many compromises in audio, if it could be made to work "well enough", the result might be quite pleasing.

New approaches are always interesting. That oil cup reminds me of the Well-Tempered Turntables... :scratch2: which one came first? (I'll leave comments on the other things mentioned, like LTs and Zero 100's, for other threads... )

As I said, I'd love to hear one, one day.

 

[albowlly]

I picked up this NAD 5120 a couple of years ago and use it regularly in my computer system. The cartridge is an Ortofon OM20. The other components are: Nad 1700 pre/tuner, Nad 2100 amp, and Alesis Monitor One MKII speakers. Very musical set up especially with the near-fields cranked (when the wife is out of the house of course). Sorry for the grainy pics, the Canon is at the office.
Tom

 

[TobascoKid]

Imagine a $30 tonearm staying up with our best. The audio catastrophe was averted. From a small country it appeared out of nowhere and shocked audiophiles so the insults came quick and loud. The damage was done and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. It was picked on, predicted it to fail, so no one bothered to compare except for us in a little boutique audio shop. Damn it was good: all performance and no frills. It was quickly shot down and buried then the expensive and profitable tonearms were quickly returned to the top of the roost where they remain today. Now we will never know. To me it smacked of bias and manipulation for profits. I wasn’t drinking their lemonade so I never bought another audio magazine. Even today there are skeptics.

I picked up mine for the Shure V15 IV cartridge and kept the table. It isn’t brawny. It gets zero stars for audiophile appeal so please pass it up. It is cute, cuddly, and silly; the wobbly suspension and flexi tonearm dances and generates laughs. A friend told me, “its drunk.” But fired up it is sober and goes to work. It is scary good and one of the few that will keep up with a cartridge. You’ll hear Brubeck in a different light. Lean sounding and detailed; no fat. The bass is very tight so I imagine it is doing its job. The strength is in the details; no muddy sounds and a strong midrange. I keep it next to a JVC QL-Y7 and enjoy watching the low-tech toy shine. Power steering you don’t get; it simply has an end of record auto-lift and shutoff. If it had one disadvantage then I would say initially getting the arm set up is time consuming.

I’m keeping it even if it is silly. Nobody would steal it.

 

[Nat]

I don't know that its neccessary to suggest there was a conspiracy against the flat arm NAD -- it may be significant that the initial positive response to the flat arm, and its current devotees seem to be using high compliance cartridges, and it very well may be that its an arm best suited to such cartridges.
Has anyone used it low compliance moving coils, especially heavy ones? It wouldn't be surprising if maybe it doesn't do as well with them. Given that the direction of the market at the time was strongly away from high compliance and toward moving coils, it may be that there just weren't enough buyers for an audiophile table (by which I mean tweaky and odd, and maybe full of inner beauty, but less so visibly) that was biased towards high compliance cartridges.
A similar fate befell the SME Series III arm, as wonderful as it was for the task it was designed for...