The Durand Tosca Tonearm: A World Class Contender

jazdoc

Member Sponsor
Aug 7, 2010
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A few months ago, my friend Joel Durand asked me to visit because he was "working on something new that he wanted me to hear". As a happy owner of the Durand Talea I, Talea II and Telos models, I was naturally intrigued. The new project was a tonearm; an attempt to integrate knowledge gained from prior experience into a new state of the art design. The performance of the initial prototype was encouraging enough for me to immediately place an order.

Over the course of the past few months, I've heard the development with multiple cartridges in Joel's system, at Mike Lavigne's and in my own home. Last weekend, I auditioned the final product at Joel's and was pleasantly surprised at the performance gap between the final production model and the last beta version I had previously heard.

The new model will be called The Tosca. I'll spare you the audiophile descriptive nonsense. This is flat-out the best tonearm I've ever heard. I'm practically giddy with anticipation.

If you are attending AXPONA this month, stop by Jonathan's room to listen in a system including the NVS turntable and Ortofon Century cartridge with Evolution Acoustics speakers and DartZeel electronics. Sorry, no pics available prior to formal introduction. Pricing to be announced at the show.
 

Ron Resnick

Site Co-Owner, Administrator
Jan 24, 2015
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Thank you for this report. I thought the Tosca looked very impressive when I saw it last year.

At that time Joel was very coy when I asked him about differences in sonic characteristics between the Tosca and the Telos.
 
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dminches

Well-Known Member
Oct 22, 2011
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I am looking forward to seeing this at Axpona. It would be nice if they had the Telos and Tosca both set up on the NVS with the same cartridge. Without that I don't know if I will be able to assess the sound differences.
 

bonzo75

Member Sponsor
Feb 26, 2014
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While I never compared their arms to others, it is impossible to stop spinning LPs at Mike and jazdoc... The Durand models they have have a certain tracking smoothness and low noise floor to them. Mike's then top Durand model with GFS was far superior the model one level down with the Anna. So if the Tosca is a further upgrade, great, though not much point improving on Mike's existing playback :) btw the ERC guy uses a Durand talea on a Garrard for his personal playback
 

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