i have an unusual request. i'm trying to purchase a relatively expensive item from someone who has no feedback of any kind and i need to wire a good amount of money....so i'll have no recourse if it turns out to be a scam. i need someone who has feedback or is known here, or a trusted friend of a person like that, to go and meet the seller and inspect the item. i'll pay a reasonable amount to this person for their time and trouble.

this would be within 50 miles of Edinborough, Scotland.

i'll get into more details with who ever might be able to help with this. please e-mail me if it's something one can do [email protected].

thanks.

mikelavigne September 13, 2011 13:51

a little slow are we?

I was just delirious, it's been so long since I had pizza under a bridge.

albertporter September 13, 2011 06:32

what's with you guys from Texas?

:^)

a little slow are we?

Mr. Dev stepped up and told us about the confusion on the Talea and it's level of set-up which was an important aspect (unintentionally....he's not a mind reader) missing from his first related post. he was a man about it. he was man'ing up. admiting the error.

we appreciated it.

mikelavigne September 13, 2011 06:16

Unoear
"Man'ing up?"

Unoear, I think Mike is referring to this guy

I admit I have not ask Man ing "what's up".

albertporter September 13, 2011 05:39

Good for you Dev.

jtinn September 13, 2011 04:52

"Man'ing up?"

unoear September 13, 2011 03:08

Dev,

thank you for the explanation about the Talea at your event. no way for you to know the Talea was not dialed in at that event until your friend tells you that. i appreciate you man'ing up and letting us know.

mikelavigne September 12, 2011 15:18

Hi Mikelakers, just in general conversation as if we were in person talking and listening. Read below.

Hi Mikelavigne, yes you are correct.

Okay here's a further update, most would not do this but I feel it's important to relay what I found out;

further communication I just found out by my friend had swapped the arm over to the TW AC to see what it would sound like with that table and it was not 100% dialed in, he said that he should have put a note on it "do not play"

So there you go. :)

dev September 12, 2011 11:28

Thanks Mikelakers,
my thoughts exactly!

grr6001 September 12, 2011 04:20

Dev,

when you said....

In conversation I was told the Talea is being replaced with the Telos so I look forward to seeing and listening first hand.

....i just wanted to clear up for any readers that the Telos is not a replacement for the Talea. it's a separate arm unto itself. the Talea continues. i realize that your intent was likely that that particular Talea owner simply intends to move up to a Telos.

mikelavigne September 12, 2011 02:48

The night started out with individuals who brought their favourite pces and wanting to listen to various arm/cart combos and the Talea/GoldFinger combo drew allot of attention being listened to allot.

... but that being said what I experienced first hand was out of the 4 arms and cart combos set-up as time went on in the end the Shroeder/Olympos and Reed/MSL Ultra BC in no order were tied for being listened too the most and the Talea combo eventually just sat unused along with the forth combo DaVinci Grandezza/Kondo IO-M.

I would say this was actually better than doing a direct comparison, interesting indeed! My own personal take listening mirrored such also.

Excuse me for asking Dev, what is the relevance of your post?

Different tonearms with different cartridges on different phono stages(and possible different RC loadings), how is it that this type of setups is better than doing a direct comparison?

mikelakers September 12, 2011 01:02

Hi Mike,

no they were not on the same table, Talea and Schroeder on a TW AC and others were on a Verdier.

Uses various phono stages; 1)FM Acoustics FM122 Mk II, 2)Ensemble Fonobrio, 3)Rossner & Sohn Canofer-S, 4)Kondo M7 Phono + Kondo Stepup Transformer, 5)S&B TX-103 Silver Step-up Transformer

dev September 11, 2011 16:41

I for one, am excited about what is sitting out there on the horizon.

me too.

mikelavigne September 11, 2011 16:21

thanks Dev, for the details. sounds like a very fun evening. those events are the very best this hobby has to offer....great friends and great music.

having owned the Olympos SL for a few years it's easily my favorite cartridge of the one's you mentioned, i definitely miss it's beauty. i don't really know the MSL Ultra BC at all.

were all the arms on the same turntable?

i will look forward to your take on the Telos.

mikelavigne September 11, 2011 15:44

Hi Mike,

Talea follow up, was a late night with 20+ others starting at 6pm enjoying food, drinks, sharing stories, laughter and listening to some great music but really not a time to do any direct comparison.

The night started out with individuals who brought their favourite pces and wanting to listen to various arm/cart combos and the Talea/GoldFinger combo drew allot of attention being listened to allot.

... but that being said what I experienced first hand was out of the 4 arms and cart combos set-up as time went on in the end the Shroeder/Olympos and Reed/MSL Ultra BC in no order were tied for being listened too the most and the Talea combo eventually just sat unused along with the forth combo DaVinci Grandezza/Kondo IO-M.

I would say this was actually better than doing a direct comparision, interesting indeed! My own personal take listening mirrored such also.

In conversation I was told the Talea is being replaced with the Telos so I look forward to seeing and listening first hand.

As to Grr6001 comments in realtion to quality, 1st time I have heard mention of this, neither does mine nor my freinds have any such issues.

In just wanted to share, the most important part was really the get together and just enjoying!

dev September 11, 2011 13:14

Yes, we are fortunate that there are many paths to service our audio addictions. This is an exciting time with many existing and new alchemists bringing to to the forefront of our hobby their talents that are both additive and complementary to working within our audio neurosis...some of these are a different-in-kind presentation; however, we all are grateful and benefit from their collective efforts. I for one, am excited about what is sitting out there on the horizon.

Mike, I am stoked that you are so excited about the changes that are happening in your room!

unoear September 11, 2011 03:15

Spiritofmusic,

with all due respect to my friend Unoear; i don't think that linear tracking's validity as the Holy Grail of tonearm design is supported by the amazing performance of the Telos.

sure, a 12" arm has the potential to have less overall alignment error than shorter pivoted arms. and a linear tracker can potentially have no alignment error. but having a longer arm than 12" with even less alignement error does not sound better overall than the 12" length. you start losing precision with longer lengths, and the small increases in alignment accuracy are not enough to balance the losses out. very good alignment is only one strong suit of the Telos.

my view is that ultimate performance of a tonearm is about minimizing any compromises. and my view is that a 12" unipivot has the most solveable compromises. there are challenges to perfect execution. but not many real obstacles.

a linear tracker can nail alignment; but it has many other challenges to overcome that are considerable to surpass the Telos.

if we could see into the future we could have a better idea.

regarding the Wave Kinetic A10 U8's; my experience is that most gear needs 4 footers. i have found that my 65 pound darTZeel amplifier is best with 6, and i have the 2 boxes of my King Cello phono/tape pre that use 3 each. they are quite light. on my music server upstairs i use 4; but it's much heavier in the rear so i use three along the rear and one in the front. some gear resopnds alot to actual placement, and other gear does not care exactly where i place them. in general; they do work in a weight range of 4 for around 25-40 pounds, but it's not 100%.

mikelavigne September 11, 2011 01:21

Spiritofmusic...yes, linear.

unoear September 10, 2011 22:27

Spiritofmusic...yes, linear.

unoear September 10, 2011 22:16

Dev,

I don't want to hijack Mike's thread, my apologies, but I have had both the Reed arm & the Telea II.

I really liked the Reed arm Except for a couple of nagging issues with the quality & set up it was a nice sounding arm.

Saying that, I much prefer the Telea II over the Reed & by a substantial margin. I also agree with Mike & Jonathan on the improvements in the retrieval of information from the Telea.
It is the most life-like sounding arm I have used to date.
So I guess everyone will have a different opinion based on there systems & taste. But to me there was no real comparison.

Thanks
Gary

grr6001 September 10, 2011 18:37

Alan, thanks for that :^)

mikelavigne September 10, 2011 14:34

hi Dev,

no question that systems are different and set-up approaches can be different, cartridges different, and so on. in my case; Steve Dobbins did the set up on my Reeds and Joel set up my Talea 1 and Talea 2. i never moved the Reed 2P from where Steve set it up until i sold it. as i've said many times; the Reed is a great tonearm; obviously i liked it enough to purchase 3 of them and had 2 2P's in my system until a few months ago that i constantly compared to the Talea's, the Rockport, and the Telos. but i'm only one data point.

i did not have the Talea 2 the last time Steve was here. in any case i cannot say whether Steve has heard the Talea 2 or what his take on it might be. the marketplace on the Talea tonearms has been quite strong; so if there is a Talea owner who was not happy i'm sure there are lots of buyers to take it off their hands at a fair value. personally i've not seen many change hands. whether that is an indication of value or not is open to interpretation.

i can only say what i hear in my room. Joel uses my room for testing because it reveals more to him. Joel has his own pretty wonderful sounding system himself. so will every user of the Reed, Talea, or Telos hear what i hear in my room and the same relative performances?

a reasonable question, i suppose.

mikelavigne September 10, 2011 14:32

Dev: I cannot speak as to why your friend feels the way he does. I can tell you that I have done the comparisons as well and I totally concur with Mike regarding the Reed versus the Talea. To me there was a noticeable improvement with the Talea in virtually every facet of listening.

Sorry I won't see you at RMAF.

jtinn September 10, 2011 14:25

Hi Mike, good to hear that more performance can still be wrung out of the humble analog waveform. Since the Telos 12" outperforms the standard 9", do you still believe this points to linear tracking still being the holy grail for tonearms, or does this arm have other things going for it above and beyond it's length?
Some queries on the Wave Kinetics a10-u8 footers: do you place them under existing feet, or adjacent to them? Is 4 per component optimal, or can 3 in tripod arrangement be feasible? How do lighter components with less downward pressure mate with the footers? Best regards

spiritofmusic September 10, 2011 14:14

Mike, thanks for the info. I was reading your thread on the "what's best forum" interesting read indeed.

It's always a tough call to make statements as you have with such enthurusiasm, sharing with others in this hobby of ours because there is always something better or different right around the corner but in the end most just seem to be hype and fade away once the dust settles.

As you wrote direct comparing is the way to go but even then what works in your system doesn't always mean the same result in someone elses but from what I'm reading apears to be substantial so this will be interesting.

With my limited experience of useing tables I have found arms in general play a dramtic sonic impact on the over all sound.

When you referred to the REED and the Beat what was Steve's take on comparision of the Talea 2 vs the Reeds sonic's.

A very good friend has many world top tear arms and cart combo's, his most recent adding the Talea 2 but the info. I have received so far is it's nice by no way offering what you have mention in sonics over others specifically his Reed.

I heard the Talea with a Alnic cart in a system a while back and seeing such in person looked promising but unfortuantely the system as a whole was not very coherent so I could not get a good take. I'm heading over to my friends place tonight to have a listen, curently he has the Talea matched up with a GoldFinger cart. I have a A90 which appears to be to your likeing, I also like so hopefully at some point he would be open to trying in his set-up.
When we last spoke I asked him how goes the Talea and his comment back was it's okay do you want it?

Unfortuantely I won't be attending that show so I'll just have to wait for more info. and reports back from others such as your self, hopefully at some point get to hear one first hand.

dev September 10, 2011 12:32