Durand Tosca Limited Edition tone arm upgrade.
background.....a few months ago I reluctantly sold my Wave Kinetics NVS turntable for a number of system development reasons, which freed up my Taiko Tana active platform which I had under the NVS, for duty under the Esoteric T1 turntable. I had been skeptical it would be a positive there, but it was most definitely that. it raised the performance of all three arms. but it clearly boosted the Primary Control Field Coil arm more than my standard Durand Tosca Gimbal bearing arm. and therefore changed the hierarchy of my tonearm/cartridge combo's. the FCL/Etsuro Gold combo moved clearly ahead of the Tosca/DaVa combo.
I had been dragging my feet on the Tosca Limited Edition upgrade for a year, after hearing it at the 23' California Audio Show. but now it's potential was more needed to compliment the new higher performance of the Esoteric. unfortunately to keep the wifey happy something would have to be sold to assist the upgrade kitty, and that ended up being my 2nd Etsuro Gold which had been on the CS Port. it sold quickly without advertising it (the new owner is thrilled), and I dropped off my Tosca at Joel Durand's home two weeks ago. yesterday Joel came over to install it. on the way to my place, he stopped at my friend Andrey Kosobutsky's home (ATR Service INC) to get the DaVa power supply wire installed inside the arm wand so it would no longer need to wrap around the arm wand, attached by thin strips of tape
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I already knew somewhat how it would sound, but I am very happy with having this upgrade. I can hear a higher level of everything from the DaVa Reference cartridge. lower noise, faster, more textures, greater ease, more solid and authoritative. the musical connection is more real, alive and immersive. I could not stop listening last night. not done any compares yet, but plenty of time for that. my opinion is that this Limited Edition Durand Tosca plays with the very big boys in tone arm performance.
The Tosca tonearm by Durand Tonearms. The latest tonearm once again pushes the boundaries of tonearm design.
www.durand-tonearms.com
a new standard Tosca retails for $18k, the Limited Edition retails for $34k.
I think it's a good thing that Tosca owners have an upgrade path to clearly more performance. if you upgrade a tt, or cartridge, or phono pre you can also upgrade the arm to raise everything more.
I do not know all the differences between the two levels, but what I do know and can see that is obviously new are the (1) counter weights, which are made of the unobtainium metal used for the special weights from the Telos Sapphire tone arm, and each counter weight has a sapphire sleeve. and (2) the bearing is new and made of the same unobtainium metal as the counterweights. in the picture below of the bearing you can see how the color of the bearing metal is different than the stainless steel outer housing.
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