Gandy Posted April 7, 2011 Share Posted April 7, 2011 difference between a curved tone arm and a straight tone arm? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaz Posted April 7, 2011 Share Posted April 7, 2011 The best way to get a curved tone arm is to do lateral pull downs, as for a straight tone arm the classic bicep curl is the best way to go im just kidding i have no idea what your talking about Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gandy Posted April 7, 2011 Author Share Posted April 7, 2011 lol... the arms on turnies come in two flavours, curved and straight, just wanted to know the difference Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaz Posted April 7, 2011 Share Posted April 7, 2011 oh i read up on this once, if memory serves me right the curved 1's tend to jump alot less and are better for scratching...i think... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
awesome88 Posted April 7, 2011 Share Posted April 7, 2011 didn't write this, i stole it (just sayin')There is a major pitfall which I think a lot of people miss. It has to do with the cartridge mounting when using the S-shaped tonearm. First of all, if you're using the tt's for anything other than scratching don't use the straight arm. It degrades the sound quality dramatically.Why is this? When the records are cut, the stylus is moved in a straight line towards the center. A straight tonearm moves in an arc, and to avoid distortion the stylus should always be parallell to the tangent of the record. With an S-shaped arm the arm will not move in a straight line towards the spindle, but will allow the cartridge to stay parallell to the tangent with very little error.Most straight arms are shorter (except in hifi tt's), thus have no overhang. The cartridge is inline with the deliberately-short tonearm, but several issues stem from this.... This design totally reduces the lateral forces that need to be corrected via anti-skating on normal turntables. Most STR8 TT's have no antiskating dial. By shortening the tonearm, they eliminate the need. This helps the needle track wonderfully in scratching and back-cueing situations. However, for playing records (yes, your precious records), STR8 arms aren't as good. Having no overhang on that type of arm produces azimuth and phase errors between the left and right channels. This distortion is a result of the needle NOT being tangent to the record groove during play (meaning that it points in a different direction depending on it's position on the record). In fact, it changes depending on where you are on the record. At the beginning of the record, there will be increased wear on the inner groove of the vinyl. The needle will track perfectly halfway through the record, then the increased wear will shift to the outer groove during the latter half of the record. So, the distortion will shift from left to right during play. Yes, this fscks-up your records.So, there's a huge tradeoff. You trade sound quality and record wear for better tracking with those straight-arm Vestax tables. This is of no concern for a scratch DJ, but is an issue if you value your vinyl. I hope this helps.http://www.kabusa.com/str8_doc.htm has a nice explanation too.So to sum up the general points : - S shaped arms (also called offset arms) are best for sound quality and minimal wear- Str8 arms that are long enough (with right overhang) and have a little angle in the cartridge are decent also- Most dj Str8 arms have underhang, so they distort more, wear out faster, but track better- Angling the cartridge on such arms will maybe improve things over one part of the record, but get worse on the other part. Keep it straight.- Ortofon Concorde carts are designed for S-shaped arms, so they are best not used for Str8 arms. If you want an ortofon, prefer the OM series then (those you need to put on a headshell). Or if you want a P-mount : shure whitelabel, it has flexible overhang.A little info, you know most turntablists use stickers to mark certain points on the record. With S-shaped arms this method works perfectly (the tonearm jumps to the next groove, where the desired sample/beat is). With Str8 arms, half of the time that doesn't work, because the needle jumps straight over the sticker (not aside)... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eggssell Posted April 7, 2011 Share Posted April 7, 2011 nice find awesome +rep.one thing to keep in mind is curved arm was good enuff for the dmc's so they can't be all that bad for scratching. but (like all things DJ related) that could be just people holding onto the old. as a lot of the turntablist elites dont actually use technics and all changed to straight arms. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gandy Posted April 7, 2011 Author Share Posted April 7, 2011 awesome, cheers, +rep Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tubby Posted April 7, 2011 Share Posted April 7, 2011 in very general terms, straight arm holds the groove better but wears your records more and doesn't sound as good. but with a bit of attention to setup there's not much in it either way. and an awful lot of turntablists get by just fine on 1200's so really not a big deal Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wazza Posted April 7, 2011 Share Posted April 7, 2011 on my turntable the tone arm don't skip even at over 45 degree's ....& its not a straight or a Curved Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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