There is a chance that some of you noticed me using for quite some time already a TransFi Terminator T3PRO tonearm as my reference one. It is also possible that some of you read my review of that tonearm in one of the magazines. Don't worry if you didn't – this review will cover both TransFi tonearm and turntable, both made by the same guy - Vic Pattachiolla. I came across information about TransFi products maybe 2 years ago on one of the American forums (just to be clear – TransFi is a British company so great feedback from Americans had to mean something). I read a lot of positive feedback regarding a linear-tracking air bearing tonearm from a company I never heard about before. To be honest I never had any linear tracking arm up to then but at that time I already started to look around to find some replacement for my TecnoArm (on Michell Gyro SE) and secondly at the time I was really impressed by Johny Bergmann's turntable – Sindre (also with linear tracking air bearing arm) but it was simply way too expensive for me. I googled TransFi website and learned that the man behind this company – Vic – was also using his tonearm on Michell's deck. I read some customers testimonies and it looked like many of them installed Terminator on some impressive decks like Michells, VPIs, Transrotors, even Linns), and they claimed that Terminator offered first of all great price/value ratio, and secondly it bested other arms they had used before. Sometimes that many positive information make me suspicious, but this time I decided to contact Vic asking him if he would be willing to send his arm for a review. To my surprise he said yes almost immediately – why surprise? Because most small companies are not willing to send their products for reviews, especially to the country on the other side of the continent. At the very beginning Vic (the owner) gave me heads up – he told me it was not a 100% commercial product and that setting it up and using it required some experience and patience. But he also promised a great award for the effort.

I received an arm with proper (for my deck) mounting column. In fact it's a round piece of some transparent material (looks bit like a scotch tape) that is placed between a plinth and arm so that the latter is fixed on the proper (for particular turntable) height. To get an arm for review I had to go through regular ordering process – that mean filling in a proper form on TransFi webpage giving certain measurements on the deck the arm was supposed to be used with. Suffice to say, skipping for now particular findings about this arm working with AirTight PC3 cartridge, I simply couldn't resist to keep Terminator. I worked great and it looked like it stood up to the requirements even of such a high-end cartridge like the one from AirTight. I knew I would not be able to buy PC3 any time soon, but I also knew that when one day I would, a proper arm would be already waiting.
Couple of months later new arm wand was offered by Vic – called Tomahawk – who told me that it offered even better sound than the previous one and since buying just the armwand with cabling wasn't so expensive I just purchased it trusting Vic's opinion. The difference between armwands was obvious – the new one was a flat piece of aluminum, with cabling (copper or silver) terminated with one of the plugs available (RCA, XLR, or molex – the first two allowing direct connection with phonostage). Just few hours with new armwand convinced me that Vic was right about even better performance. He said it was mainly due to its shorter length and improved rigidity.

Vic was and is an enthusiast so it wasn't enough for him to make only great arms. Already at that time he worked on a design of turntable. It was ready last year, and of course I wanted to check it out. I had to wait some time for it – as I already mentioned TransFi is a small company making their products in small batches and at the same time facing quite some demand from customers who wanted Vic's arms and decks. It seems that many of over 200 users of Terminator/Tomahawk wanted TransFi decks too. So obviously sales came first, reviews could wait – no argue about that. But finally my time has come, and after over a month spent with Salvation/Terminator system I could finally share my impressions with you.

SOUND

Before going to details of how the reviewed device sounds like I would like to start with explaining why this deck and this arm are not recommended to everybody. Vic, as I said before, is an enthusiast who, like many other audio manufacturers, started as a DIY kind of guy. Modding „regular” products, trying to build his own for private use is what many people do to get the sound and/or devices tailored for their own needs. Some of them built their devices and than refined it over the years until they arrived to some satisfactory fruit of their work. Then some of them decided to share their work with other people – some of them just to present their design to their friends, to participants on some audio (usually web-based) communities. Other decided to go more or less commercial to get something in return for many years of hard work. Vic chose the second way of sharing his achievements with other audio freaks, but he offered his products in reasonable prices to make them available for as many people as possible. Secondly it seems that he managed to gather some group of enthusiasts using his arms and decks who helped him to improve these products even further. If one of the owners of the arm or deck comes up with some idea of how to improve this product and lets Vic know about his discovery it is quite possible that after checking that Vic would implement enhancement in his design – so it reminds me a bit an open-source software („a bit” as open-source is usually free, and you need to pay for TransFi products). But here there are (like in open source communities) many enthusiast who care only about making particular product better. From what I learned by contacting Vic many times he is an open-minded guy always ready to discuss how to get even better sound. I might be wrong but I think that it's also a story of how Tomahawk came into existence. A classic arm's wand has been replaced with flat piece of aluminum, that is cut to a proper shape. There is no classic headshell either– there are only threaded and un-threaded cartridge mounting holes. Difference in performance is significant and clearly positive (at least with cartridges I had at my disposal during the test).
You might say that both tonearm and deck are finished work as well as kind of „work-in-progress”, meaning that it is always possible that Vic, or one of users will come up with some new enhancement and it will be implemented in next generation of products. The difference between TransFi and bigger, well-known brands is, that the latter would implement enhancements and call it a new model or at least new version and to get it you have to sell whatever you have (loosing 40, 50, 60%? of the buying price) and get a new one (always more expensive than previous). With Vic, most likely you'll be able to buy only the enhancement and install it in your deck yourself, and of course you'll pay only a friction of price of new product. The only downside – you don't get a plug&play device – you need to put some effort to it. I don't mind – if you do, it's not a product for you.

As already mentioned when buying Salvation turntable you don't get a plug&play device. You need to assembly both deck and arm yourself using detailed, filled with pictures manual presented on TransFi's webpage. Again – if you don't want to do it, or think you can't do it (although trust me – it is quite simple) than you need to look for other product.

Another thing is how TransFi products look like. Most of the people that saw Salvation and Terminator at my place said that it looked much better „in flesh” than on pictures but still most of commercial products are manufactured on bigger scale and that allows to make them look better, more … elegant (?). I'm not saying that Salvation or Terminator are poorly made or finished – they look OK. The point is that you can easily tell that this are like hand-made products, not mass-products. Some people would mind, some would love that (like me) as they get a special product, that very few other people have, that you could easily tell was made by a man, and not on automatized assembly line. Each customer need to make up his mind – if he need something nice and shiny with fancy brand name on it – it's his right. If you want something special, even though not so fancy looking, and you care about performance most of all, and you don't have tones of money to spend – than TransFi might be your choice. For me the look of audio device is the last thing I care about, but I know many people who think otherwise and it's their right. Take o look on Salvation's picture – that's one original concept for a turntable - shape of plinth, a massive platter, linear tracking air bearing arm – that's something you don't see very often. There are no fancy elements – each and every one of them has its purpose and is made in a way not to increase costs any more than necessary. It is definitely not „cost-oriented” thinking like „lets cut the costs, bit worse performance is fine”, its more like „let get the best sound possible and when we do lets check if we can achieve exactly same performance saving some money”. There is a lot of clever thinking invested in this design and the result is outstanding performance OK enough about that – I'm sure you already got it.

Let's finally take a look at the Salvation turntable. A plinth is made of some black stone. You get it with a hole to install arm in, with another for main bearing, plus three aluminum collets you need to install three brass cones in. There are rubber O-rings to be placed on cones (3 on each) as additional damping. There are also 4 small metal plates on bottom site of a slate – the small box with on/off switch and precise speed control will be later underhung here (with magnets). There are two sockets on the back side of this box – one is power inlet (turntable is supplied with large, external power supply), the other is power output that is connected with cable with free-standing motor. Vic decided to use a DC motor, that is placed in a solid, aluminum pod, that sits on a thick aluminum base that rests on sorbothane pad. Again there are rubber O-rings placed around aluminum pod to damp vibrations. What's the most interesting part of this deck is so called rim-drive. Sure – it's not Vic's invention but it is not used to often by competitors. For those who never heard of this kind of drive a word of explanation how it works – the platter is rim-driven from a free standing motor pod. The motor pod is engaged via a lever with the driving pulley acting on a rubber traction band around the platter. According to Vic it is simply a much better, sound-wise, drive than z belt one. To make sure that the pulley would engage rubber traction band around platter manufacturer offered a simple way to change the height of where the pulley is, which can be achieved by unscrewing one small screw in motor pod and moving motor inside pod up or down. After experiments Vic found out that it was better not to use feedback speed control, as even though it offered rock solid speed stability, but it degraded the sound after all. So finally he decided to use a a linear power supply with multiple cascaded regulators with some extra tweaks, that makes no attempt to control platter speed other than by supplying a constant voltage. As the result speed does not vary or waiver over short timescales, although it can vary over longer timescales. Point is the short timescale speed changes are clearly audible and the longer timescale ones are not.

One of the things Vic took a really good care about was vibration damping. I mentioned already O-rings and turntables feet, on motor pod, a sorbothane pads under motor pod, but also under brass feet, plus there are also those rubber bands around platter.
There are two versions of platter to chose from – the tested, top one – 9kg of aluminum, or bit lighter acrylic one (if you buy a version with this one than also slate plinth will be bit thinner and lighter). The inverted bearing features a ceramic ball acting on a Lignum Vitae thrust plate. Lignum Vitae is a very special material (wood actually) - incredibly dense and also self lubricating. To change a speed one needs to exchange a drive pulley – manufacturer delivers 3 of them for 33 1/3, 45 and even 78 r.p.m.). Small inconvenience is that replacing one pulley with the other usually requires adjusting motor pod's position against the deck.
There is one important thing that all users must remember – never leave a pulley resting against platter when it is not spinning. This would quickly created a flat spot and you surely don't want that. Setting up this deck takes maybe 10 minutes from the moment you open a box. Tonearm's assembly takes even shorter, and a installation on the deck (without fine tuning) also takes just minutes. The manual is detailed and helpful so I guess nobody would have any bigger issues with it but if you do just contact Vic – he is always willing to remotely help if needed.
Setting up the tonearm with cartridge might be challenging for people who never dealt with linear tracking arms before, but I managed so you also would. Again clever thinking of the designer is obvious. There are 3 slots in arm's base that allow to use it on (probably) any deck. Not only you can use one of three slots but also move the arm along chosen slot. Length of the armwand can also be easily adjusted. The basic idea of linear tonearm is that stylus should travel on a straight line and not on curved one like when you use pivoted arm. That's how the records are cut so it should be a good idea to play them in the same way.
The first version of the arm – Terminator – has an armwand in regular, tube like shape, so to set the correct azimuth one has to roll the whole armwand to desired position. When it comes to Tomahawk setting the azimuth is done by simply screwing the Twin Point Pivots (as Vic calls them) in or out until the top of the wand is parallel to the record surface. Basically there are means, smart ones I may add, to set up everything – above mentioned azimuth, VTF, armwand length, VTA (on the fly), levels (of the deck and carrier) – you name it. And as I said all of them are smart – easy to operate. Most of them are simply necessary but for example VTA on the fly is something not that many tonearms have to offer, and most of them are much more expensive than TransFi's.

As already mentioned it is not just a linear tracking but also air bearing tonearm. This means that air has to be delivered to the arm. Johny Bergmann has develop special pump, that works noiselessly, ensures constant pressure of delivered air, etc, etc, which, as Johny Bergmann told me himself, has a significant impact on the price of his turntables. Vic created a turntable and arm that were supposed to offer great performance at reasonable price so he used another pump that also got the job done. He used aquarium pump with adjustable air flow and a 5l plastic gas tank for smoothing pumps pulsation. Cheap, easy to buy, getting job done. Downside – it doesn't look as cool as Johny's pump and it works louder so you need to put it somewhere like in a cupboard to keep the noise down. Another upside – you don't need to buy those elements from Vic, you can buy them on your own in the nearest shop that sell this kind of aquarium equipment.

One more thing before I start to describe sound. I received one more thing from Vic with Salvation – a Reso-Mat. The idea with this mat is to have absolutely no influence on the record. It sits on cones with minimal contact with no clamping. Vibrations from the stylus are free to dissipate in the open air with no reflections. There is nothing to dampen the record either. There are two versions of this mat – one of them is made specifically for Salvation with Terminator/Tomahawk arm, as the cones are 10mm long so you need to be able to set tonearm really high up above platter. The second version for all other turntables has cones of 5mm length The price is (again) reasonable – 30£ so it is worth a shot. You might use it with cones directed up or down. You don't need to worry about cones scratching vinyl – it doesn't happen, your records are perfectly safe. It is an additional element to Salvation that you may or may not use but it seems to have a positive effect on the sound, which was to be expected as it comes from the same designer. I haven't tried it on another deck though so I can't tell you for sure if and how it would improve/change the sound in such a case.

As already mentioned I did not have an AirTight PC3 at my disposal this time, but BestAudio delivered London (Decca) Super Gold cartridge, so I could use it and two my own cartridges (AudioTechnica AT33PTG, Koetsu Black GoldLine) during this test. To use London though I had to borrow RCM Sensor Prelude phonostage as mine Nibiru does not work with high-output cartridges. Part of the test was done with my reference system, but a large part was also done with Isophon Cassiano speakers and Vitus SIA-025 integrated I had on load at the time. As I wanted to get most of this deck I used Tomahawk armwand as it proved to be actually better sounding than Terminator.

I started listening sessions with my trusted, even though inexpensive, AT33PTG. In my opinion this cartridge offers amazing price/performance ratio and works very well on T3PRO arm. I used it already with this arm on Michell Gyro SE deck and I really loved its sound then, but now, on Salvation it proved to sound even better. The most obvious difference between Gyro and Salvation was greater dynamics, lower, more powerful, taut bass, and amazing selectivity delivered by the latter. I used Metallica record (4 discs, 45 r.p.m edition) many times during my tests and I got satisfying results many times. But this time it sounded even better. Bass has its power, speed, was nicely differentiated and was really taut unlike on Michell or Linn (both are suspended designs). Sound of guitars was raw, rough, and very clean – no colorization, no distortion of any kind introduced by deck. Even though it is still not an „audiophile” recording it finally sounded in an orderly, clean way it always should.
I also enjoyed immensely Japanese issue of Dire Straits Love over gold – fantastic, rich and powerful pulse of bass guitar was simply exemplary as well as differentiation of its sounds was. I wasn't sure that I ever enjoyed Knopfler's guitar that much before – it was so easy to follow all his solos even those played with lightning speed. To be honest, even though I realized that Mark was not the greatest vocalist of all times, I was impressed with how palpable, natural his voice was. I gave it another try and placed an Alchemy on a platter. That's a live performance of Dire Straits offering above average dynamics and tones of emotions. Salvation created very convincing illusion of concert with all the ambiance, audience's reactions and so on. The longer I listened to it the more volume I pumped up and even when I got dangerously close to a concert level, sound was still very clean and fast. Again there was no distortion at all and it sounded so much better than when played from a CD. Listening to this concert it was easy to realize that the band enjoyed the concert as much as audience did. They put so much positive energy into their music, making is so vivid that it, that I simply couldn't help tapping with my feet, rocking my head and so on. The clear advantage of Salvation was its capability to extract all this energy from a groove and deliver it to the listener in a very vivid, palpable, convincing way. Sure Alchemy might not be the best recording of all times but, as during real live performances, if it is so engaging, so convincing you simply don't care about some minor sound engineer mistakes, you simply enjoy live music, the ambiance and all those fabulous impressions – these are the only things that matter.

I couldn’t resist not to listen to latest edition of Pink Floyd's The Wall. Not so long ago, right after its premiere, I had a chance to listen to it in Osiecka Studio. They combined this premiere with Polish and European premiere of Isophone's top model loudspeakers Berlina RC11, that were driven by Vitus monoblocks, and the record was played on SME30, with one of the Dynavector's top models of cartridge. Studio was bit too big even for this system but still, this amazing, reference system proved that EMI did a good job with this new re-edition of one of the most famous albums of all times (I'm not going to claim that this is the best edition ever, but it is really good one). That presentation offered amazing amounts of details and almost infinite dynamics (I believe that almost concert-like volume level was partially responsible for that).
So did I have any choice having at home, much less expensive, but still models of Isophone (Cassiano), and Vitus (SIA-025 integrated, not monoblocks) and Salvation (instead of SME)? I didn't. Of course the experience was not as „live-like” as it was in Osiecka Studio, but how detailed, dynamic, and transparent the sound delivered by Salvation was, impressed me a lot. All that at the friction of the price of the other system. Also spacing and stereo imaging of Salvation's presentation was amazing. The soundstage was not only impressive left to right and front to back wise, but I really liked the precision a placement of each instrument on the stage, of its 3D definition in the space and so on. Items placed somewhere in the back were still showed with this precision, and their sound was still detailed and clear. Great selectivity allowed me to focus on any element of the music and follow it without much effort. All the special effect – choppers, explosions and so on, sounded very realistic, definitely more realistic than any turntable I ever had a chance to review. No question that it was the best, the richest, the most enjoyable reproduction of The Wall I ever heard apart from this one from Osiecka Studio. Michell (with same arm and cartridge) delivered less focused sound, lacking some of Salvation's precision and clarity. Plus those special effect were not so realistically reproduced. To be clear – before I heard that on Salvation I really enjoyed Michell's performance.

PTG33 is really good when it comes to vocals reproduction. There was no significant difference in this regard comparing using it on Gyro SE and Salvation, but some small things got better on reviewed deck. It seemed to me that Patricia Barber's or Frank Sinatra's voices carried even more emotions than before, sounded richer and bit smoother. Especially Frank's voice became so smooth and gentle as I never heard it before. I obviously never had a chance to hear him live but that's exactly how I always imagined or felt his voice really sounded like - „pure velvet”, just as delivered by Salvation.
Next disc on my list was a fabulous concert of three amazing guitar players, that took place several years ago in San Francisco on Friday night. I wrote about it many times – I love a sound of acoustic guitars – these and double-bass are my favorite instruments. So from my point of view a concert of three guitar masters must be an extraordinary event. The problem is, it's not when played from CD so until I got it on vinyl I didn't listen to it at all. But vinyl record – that's different! Sound become so lively, so involving with such a great ambiance of live performance. With Salvation you can clearly hear how much both audience and musicians enjoyed the whole show. To what I already knew thanks to different decks, Salvation added this amazing clarity and precision of presentation – now it became absolutely obvious not only where each of guitarist was but also which one was which (if you knew the characteristic sound of each of those guys). Sound of guitars was simply organic, really „live-like” - the slightest pluck of the string, knock on soundboard, soundboard's response, fast attack and long decay – everything was there just as it would have been on live concert. Plus there was this amazing audience who obviously loved music played by Paco de Lucia, Al di Meola and John McLaughlin and who could blame them. Salvation allowed me to take part in this outstanding event and simply to have amazing fun. Stylus touched the groove, three masters started to play and I forgot to analyze sound in seconds, I was there just inhaling every sound, experiencing it, living it. It took a lot of effort to realize why I enjoyed this performance better than when delivered by Michell. Sound was more precise and more detailed but it did not push the sound towards dry, cold analytical presentation. These features of the sound were added on top of musical, bit warm presentation of Michell making it even better, more complete, more involving.

The sound did not change as much as I expected when I finally replaced 33PTG with London Super Gold. It proved how good Japanese cartridge was if only used on a very good tonearm. Surely London was able to show some things even better than AT. There were more details in sound, presented in more distinct way, there was some gain in terms of resolution, and precision of imaging as well as three-dimensionality. There was only one condition – records I used had to be very clean. London cartridges, due to their specific design, are capable of withdrawing a lot of information from the groove, but they read dirt, or scratches on record's surface also as information so you need to avoid those not to hear them. But after all each vinyl lower takes great care of his records so that should not be a problem.
Sound seemed also very... direct, which you might like or not, but this aspect of the sound made this cartridge sound different than others I had at my disposal. On this particular turntable London was also the most transparent and precise sounding one. The difference between British cartridge and Japanese ones was not that big but it was its advantage even over more expensive Koetsu. I expected bigger difference (comparing to 33PTG) in terms of dynamics or bass presentation – after all if you took a look at London Super Gold's specs you'd see a 5mV output and recommended load of 47kΩ, which is typical for MMs, even though London is not really a MM cartridge. Usually MMs offer less refined sound then MCs, but more dynamics, well extended bass and so on. It is not some „golden rule” but it works in most cases. For me London working on Salvation sounded like something in between classic MM and MC sound – dynamics was better than from any of MC cartridges but also resolution, refinement was higher than what I heard from many MMs.

Last but not least few words about Salvation/Tomahawk/Koetsu Black combination. This was clearly the most refined sound with richest midrange, not as transparent as with London, but as detailed. Details though were not so distinctly presented as by British cartridge. Sound was very smooth, coherent, with beautiful timbre of acoustic instruments and human voices. It created also the most musical, involving presentation and all concerts sounded amazingly well. When I played Jazz at the Pawnshop I wasn't really listening to it, I was living it, experiencing it, sitting in a small Swedish club, watching Arne Domnerus and his buddies playing with their instruments. Lars Erstrand's vibes was so vibrant, Arne Domnerus' clarinet so vivid, but sometimes also bit rough. I could go on and on as I enjoyed equally each acoustic recording. Suffice to say that when I played a „super-classic” record - Cannonball Adderly's Somethin' else during a meeting of some audiophiles friends for the first time that evening everybody immediately stopped talking and focused exclusively on music until the very last sound. It was so palpable, so intense experience – the great Miles and his magical trumpet just within the reach of a hand – everybody just focused on music not to miss a single tone. During this meeting we played this record with 33PTG, but later on I listened to it again with Koetsu installed in Tomahawk and it took my breath away, it felt so real, so magical, that I did my best not to disturb it in any way. This was a brilliant recording, outstanding issue, and hardware that recovered pure magic from the groove. What an experience! It also proved again an advantage of Salvation over Gyro SE. The latter also showed how good this issue of Somethin' else was, but it didn't allow me to experience this pure magic of a fabulous spectacle happening within the reach of my hand, that Salvation delivered.

I was lucky that I had a chance to used 3 different cartridges on Salvation/Tomahawk. It proved that this turntable was fully capable of performing very well with each of them without enforcing its own character over them, just on contrary – it help them to present their full capabilities, their sonic character. I felt this way regardless if I played with AT 33PTG (circa 415$ in Japan), London Super Gold (3.750 PLN), or Koetsu Black Goldline (almost 2 k$ at present). Each of these cartridges seemed to give it all, its best performance – each of them sang beautifully but each of them in a different way. Of course it is only my opinion/impression that each cartridge showed its best – it doesn't have to be true – to be sure I would have to used also couple of decks and tonearms. The point is that what we hear is not, and can not be objectively judged. There are so many factors that make us like or dislike a sound. That's why I like Linn's motto – if it sounds better it is better. For me Salvation and T3Pro tonearm were the best items of their kinds I heard in my room ever. Not the most user friendly, not the most beautiful ones, but offering outstanding sound at reasonable price – that is not so common these days. „Commercial” products offering that level of performance cost couple of times more. So there is only one choice for me – Salvation will be my new reference deck, together with T3Pro arm. I already know what it could offer with At33PTG and much more expensive Koetsu Black. My guess – with AirTight PC3 it will get close to my mythical sonic nirvana – it's only a matter of time. I realize that it's not easy to spend money on a product that you have to pay in advance for that in addition you can't even test before buying. But I believe that no vinyl fan could regret this choice.

DESCRIPTION

Salvation
Salvation deck is a product of British company TransFi. You get it with a hole to install arm in, with another for main bearing, plus three aluminum collets you need to install three brass cones in. There are rubber O-rings to be placed on cones (3 on each) as additional damping. There are also 4 small metal plates on bottom site of a slate – the small box with on/off switch and precise speed control will be later underhung here (with magnets). There are two sockets on the back side of this box – one is power inlet (turntable is supplied with large, external power supply), the other is power output that is connected with cable with free-standing motor. Vic decided to use a DC motor, that is placed in a solid, aluminum pod, that sits on a thick aluminum base that rests on sorbothane pad. Again there are rubber O-rings placed around aluminum pod to damp vibrations. What's the most interesting part of this deck is so called rim-drive. Sure – it's not Vic's invention but it is not used to often by competitors. For those who never heard of this kind of drive a word of explanation how it works – the platter is rim-driven from a free standing motor pod. The motor pod is engaged via a lever with the driving pulley acting on a rubber traction band around the platter. To make sure that the pulley would engage rubber traction band around platter manufacturer offered a simple way to change the height of where the pulley is, which can be achieved by unscrewing one small screw in motor pod and moving motor inside pod up or down. After experiments Vic found out that it was better not to use feedback speed control, as even though it offered rock solid speed stability, but it degraded the sound after all. So finally he decided to use a a linear power supply with multiple cascaded regulators with some extra tweaks, that makes no attempt to control platter speed other than by supplying a constant voltage. The turntable can use one of the two platters – heavier, 9kg aluminum one (as the one reviewed) or bit lighter acrylic one. The inverted bearing features a ceramic ball acting on a Lignum Vitae thrust plate. Lignum Vitae is a very special material (wood actually) - incredibly dense and also self lubricating. To change a speed one needs to exchange a drive pulley – manufacturer delivers 3 of them for 33 1/3, 45 and even 78 r.p.m.). Another option for this deck is a Reso-mat. It is very thin and record sits on cones with minimal contact and with no clamping. One can use it also with cones down.

T3PRO Tomahawk
T3PRO is a linear tracking, air-bearing tonearm. The idea is not new, of course. That's how the vinyl record is cut so it might be a good idea to play it in the same way. Stylus travels along a straight line and not along curved one like when installed on pivoted arm. The newest version is made of aluminum. It sports a flat base with three bracket slots that allow to install this arm on almost any deck. The armwand is underhung on a carrier, and it travels along it on air that is delivered via small holes in a carrier by a pump. Terminator sports a carbon fiber wand with a copper cabling terminated with molex plug that goes to proper socket on the arm. This also means that you need an additional interconnect between arm and phonostage. The Tomahawk version is a flat piece of aluminum of certain shape, and cartridge is screwed directly to the wand. There are few versions of cabling copper or silver, different termination and length are available. Most of them are terminated with RCA (or XLR) plugs which means you don't need additional interconnect. It is really easy to use this arm – the means for setup are well thought of – setting VTF, armwand length, or VTA (on the fly) doesn't require much effort. To make this arm work one needs a pump and smoothing tank – manufacturer can deliver them with the arm or might specify what kind of pump and tank to buy. Pump is an aquarium one – if possible with adjustable air flow and as quiet as possible, and tank is a simple, 5l gas tank.