DIY Armboard

[Andrew]

I've surprised myself to be honest. That Helius Orion is a lovely arm but whoever designed the arm mounting must have been bonkers or a sadist. Why on earth anyone wants to complicate arm mountings is beyond me. The original Rega single circle is the ideal for me, but even Rega have gone and complicated it with the 3 screw mounting of the later arms. Of course this is passed off as an improvement, but that is utter bollocks. IIRC they made some cheaper arms for a third party which used the (cheaper to produce) 3 point mount and then decided to inflict it on the rest of us too.

I actually think that the less tightly an arm is secured, the better it sounds. If I can get hold of another one of those Pete Riggle VTAF jobbies, I'll snap the sellers hand off for it. If anyone has either a VTAF or counterweight and stub from Pete Riggle, I'd be interested in buying it.

In case anyone hasn't seen them, you should look them up.

http://www.vtaf.com

The arms is essentially unsecured and just sits in the round hole. It's even lined with Teflon to make it even less likely to grip the hole. All that stops the arm rotating in the hole is a small bracket that sits either side of the Rega anti skate device. The arm is effectively as decoupled as you can get and the whole thing sounds ten times better for it. I wish I'd hung onto mine because the import duty and vat make the price of buying new prohibitive. I'm sure one will turn up in time though. Anyone with a Rega based arm really ought to hear one if they can. The results are fab.

[jammy395]

Cheers Andrew.
One quirky kind of arm is old Woody - But a doddle to set up apparently. And nice review's.

[in_denial]

That Helius Orion is a lovely arm but whoever designed the arm mounting must have been bonkers or a sadist. Why on earth anyone wants to complicate arm mountings is beyond me.

Geoffrey Owens does not explain on the Helius website, but alludes to the issue, and from the Orion Mk.2 onwards all Helius arms have round holes for the arm pillar, usually with three bolt holes for the VTA base, which seems a reasonable complication to me.

Did you make or buy in your composite panels used in your armboards? I had to make my carbon fibre/end-grain balsa sandwich panels because the only seller I could find was based in the USA and gobsmackingly expensive!

-- Tim

[Andrew]

I just made the armboards up, but the SME cutout isn't the easiest to achieve for a DIYer. The Delrin armboard was great though. The Orion was a beauty but I didn't feel at home using it for some reason.