I've been following this with great interest and as a byproduct have wondered about the differences between carefully compensating by angling (in respect to radius of disc) a cartridge in the headshell on a straight tone arm vs. a curved tonearm with same cartridge angle. This is assuming that both tone arms have the same effective length and are of course radial/pivoting and not tangential arms. I've been digging through the AES E-library a bit haven't found any article covering this specifically with a discussion of comparative distortion at select imperfect angles (although have now read a lot on anti skate design, tone arm weight, rigidity, etc.). I did come across a quite old article that's pretty interesting though and close to what I'm looking for: Carlson, R.E. (1954). Resonance, Tracking, and Distortion: An Analysis of Phonograph Pickup Arms. Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. 2(3), 151-162. especially pp. 157-158. I've seen statements by companies saying s bent arms are better but I'd like to see the documentation/detail. Any direction to sources would be appreciated along with discussion here. Thanks, Nathan Coy On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 3:18 PM, Graeme Jaye <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > On 17/12/2011 Andrew Hamilton wrote; > > AH> I think Mr. Jaye meant to say "tangential tracking arms." However, > the > AH> tangential trackers do move along the radius of the disc. (: Better > AH> maybe to call the straight and S-shaped arms, pivoting. > > Sorry to have confused anyone. > > In my original post, I actually referred to "a radial tracking system" > - which means, of course, a linear tone arm (and tracks along the > radius of the disc, as you rightly say) - not a radial tone arm. > > The main thrust of my comment was that Goran Finnberg had actually > confused the original question (which concerned the differences > between straight and curved radial tracking arms) with linear trackers > and went to great lengths to prove that he was right (which he was) > although not understanding the question. > > Graeme Jaye > > [log in to unmask] > > Audio Restoration and Location Sound Recording > http://www.personal-cd.com >