Munich 2015

Acoustical Systems two years ago introduced the Axiom pick up arm—one of the world’s most sophisticated and expensive. This year AS showed the arm on a "tricked out"La Platine Verdier Granito that had mistakenly been identified by someone in the room as something new from Acoustical Systems. Acoustical Systems will soon introduce less costly pick up arm.

According to Acoustical Systems:

"This is a vintage La Platine Verdier Granito equipped with a SDP ( Special Decoupled Platter). Further equipped with an AP-7075 alloy Dural-arm pillar featuring the Micro Seiki arm board system. The SDP comes with various options for arm board / arm pillar and is a customized solution offered by acoustical-systems for various turntables.

Prime target is to eliminate all bearing vibrations being transmitted into the spindle and from there circular into the record.

Creating this way parasitic vibrations which do interfere with the tracking process and smearing micro-detail, dynamics and creating background noise in the sonic picture. The SDP actually stops this parasitic vibrations very efficiently. The SDP features a spindle totally decoupled from the TT’s spindle and further an embedding (underside of platter) around the “original” spindle which further dampens bearing-sourced vibrations and prevents them to enter the record during actual play.

The SDP is a customized solution available only on direct inquire from acoustical-systems and each specifically tailored to the individual customer’s set-up and requests."

I also saw in the Zelloton room the multi-tube Mal Valve phono preamplifier but couldn’t get any info about the design or the price but with that many tubes you hope to not have a “mal” valve!.

Acoustic Systems also introduced what appears to be a handy VTA/SRA and azimuth gauge. The clear plastic wafer has inscribed on it a series of SRA and VTA angles that help give you a reasonably good approximation of your set-up’s SRA/VTA.

(unfortunately the picture cuts off most of the SRA angles)

Of course a digital microscope is better, but this relatively inexpensive piece (less than $150) should prove very helpful in approximating correct SRA. Another gauge helps set azimuth, but only to affirm cantilever perpendicularity to the record surface, and as we all now know, that is not necessarily the correct azimuth setting because it does not guaranty that you’ve minimized crosstalk between the channels and maximized separation.

Doing that requires electrical measurements using either a digital voltmeter, software such as Dr. Feickert’s Adjust+ program, or a digital oscilloscope. Perpendicularity though is a good place to start!