World Debut: Vertere Reference Tonearm

[NorthStar]

-- ...I just started a new thread in the Video section of the forums, regarding Counterfeit Culture.
...Or more precisely in the What's Best In Content - Online Videos, or right here.

* Please, do forgive me Gary.

 

[garylkoh]

Just as an aside: Did you know that the United States American president's airplane,
the Air Force One has some counterfeit parts in it? Yes it does as a matter of real fact.
...And the same with his personal helicopter.

Many airplanes of the entire world industry have counterfeit parts in them. And the same with many cars, with counterfeit brake pads just as one example.
And what does it do? ...Saves money (from buying them from China), and kills people.
...And the same is true with the sales of counterfeit medication pills from ebay, and even from drugstores and doctor's offices from all over the world.
{You can google "Counterfeit goods from China".}

Like I said; it is totally off topic, but somehow related if we only knew which parts are used (where they're coming from).

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BOT: And Air Force One is also the name of that TechDAS TT's platter ....
How much is that Vertere Reference Tonearm again?

I'm not surprised. On the Vertere Reference, every single part was custom machined. There are exactly zero off-the-shelf parts. For example - the arm lift mechanism on Touraj's previous effort, the Artemiz was from Jelco, as is the arm lift on the Graham that was installed on the table. The Jelco arm lift assembly is about 5 pounds sterling ($7) in quantities. Touraj says that just the polishing on the stainless steel lever that he uses on the arm lift he designed cost him 5 pounds (and that's without the cost of the lever itself).

The arm was designed as a cost-no-object exercise to see how far he could take a tonearm. If he sells some, he sells some. If not, he would have learned enough to design and manufacture a cheaper model that would sound better than the competition. But the difference between the Vertere Reference Tonearm and the $650,000 turntable is that the tonearm is a commercial product.

He has the parts for the first 5 arms, and they are all already sold. Unfortunately, all I get to take home with me is the memory of wonderful music and the pictures.

 

[garylkoh]

My point, circling back the comparison to the vivid setting on the TV and the reasons behind it..... is that one of the indicators that a piece of equipment is doing what it should be doing, is that it can be very understated in sonic attributes, regarding initial assessment.

That is exactly the conclusion that both Touraj and I came to over the 5 days we've had to enjoy the system. There is nothing vivid about the presentation, and yet there is no loss of details.

It allows us to let go of the sound and enjoy the music without reservation. We stopped comparing the system to this system and that system. For the first time in my audio show history, no one asked me if the cables were silver, or copper, or hybrid. No one commented on the tweeter being too hot, or the bass being too lean or too much. I was a little dismayed that no one came and spoke to me about the speakers and I mentioned this to Touraj.

His response was that when a system gets beyond a certain threshold of performance, then your reference shifts. You are no longer mentally referencing it to other hifi systems you have heard, you are now referencing it to live. I told him that there's very little sh*t that is covering up the music......

 

[A.wayne]

I'm not surprised. On the Vertere Reference, every single part was custom machined. There are exactly zero off-the-shelf parts. For example - the arm lift mechanism on Touraj's previous effort, the Artemiz was from Jelco, as is the arm lift on the Graham that was installed on the table. The Jelco arm lift assembly is about 5 pounds sterling ($7) in quantities. Touraj says that just the polishing on the stainless steel lever that he uses on the arm lift he designed cost him 5 pounds (and that's without the cost of the lever itself).

The arm was designed as a cost-no-object exercise to see how far he could take a tonearm. If he sells some, he sells some. If not, he would have learned enough to design and manufacture a cheaper model that would sound better than the competition. But the difference between the Vertere Reference Tonearm and the $650,000 turntable is that the tonearm is a commercial product.

He has the parts for the first 5 arms, and they are all already sold. Unfortunately, all I get to take home with me is the memory of wonderful music and the pictures.

Well at least you have the memories, all we have are the pictures .....

 

[NorthStar]

-- Gary, I'm sorry; I should have been more explicit.
In no way I was inferring that the Vertere Reference Tonearm contains 'inferior' parts.

I apologized for my off topic post.

And the reason why I mentioned what I did, is because I watched this excellent documentary just few days ago, about Counterfeit Culture, and in it they mentioned Air Force One, and I made a simple "word" relation with that turntable on which the Vertere tonearm was used. ...Nothing more.

_____________

$650,000 for a turntable is a lot of dough, no matter how you cut it.
And a $35,000 TT's tonearm is no small peanuts either.
Add to that a $15,000 cartridge (Clearaudio Goldfinger Statement, or/and Koetsu Coralstone Platinum Mono).

Then you need a good Phono preamp; the Vitus Audio MP-P201 Masterpiece for $60,000
...A good-record cleaning machine, quality phono interconnects, other essential phono accessories, ...

And just to be fully well equipped (best) in turntable playback, and with the very best 45rpm albums (220gr and all remastered jazz...), you are easily into the one million dollars territory.
...And that's without the amplification, the loudspeakers, the acoustical room treatments, and all the related rest, including the rest chair.

So basically just one analog source (to play your best vinyls).

She (TT & tonearm) shure looks good though. :b

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[rockitman]

Fremer's mention of the arm.

http://www.analogplanet.com/content/heres-another-thing-you-dont-see-every-day

Geeze Gary, you never told us about the built in cueing light...
That is cool.

 

[garylkoh]

Well at least you have the memories, all we have are the pictures .....

Of the regularly posting members, I think only Myles and Amir managed to make it to my room from WBF - plus a couple who identified themselves as "lurkers". Alan Sircom also managed to make it, plus the usual coterie of reviewers who mostly did not have the time to sit down and listen.

 

[garylkoh]

Geeze Gary, you never told us about the built in cueing light...
That is cool.

Slaps myself in the face..... 20 pages and I didn't mention that it had a cueing light? My only two excuses are age and being busy. Sorry - it was the coolest thing about the arm.... until I heard it, then all thoughts of technology departed my mind.

 

[garylkoh]

-- Gary, I'm sorry; I should have been more explicit.
In no way I was inferring that the Vertere Reference Tonearm contains 'inferior' parts.

I apologized for my off topic post.

And the reason why I mentioned what I did, is because I watched this excellent documentary just few days ago, about Counterfeit Culture, and in it they mentioned Air Force One, and I made a simple "word" relation with that turntable on which the Vertere tonearm was used. ...Nothing more.

_____________

$650,000 for a turntable is a lot of dough, no matter how you cut it.
And a $35,000 TT's tonearm is no small peanuts either.
Add to that a $15,000 cartridge (Clearaudio Goldfinger Statement, or/and Koetsu Coralstone Platinum Mono).

Then you need a good Phono preamp; the Vitus Audio MP-P201 Masterpiece for $60,000
...A good-record cleaning machine, quality phono interconnects, other essential phono accessories, ...

And just to be fully well equipped (best) in turntable playback, and with the very best 45rpm albums (220gr and all remastered jazz...), you are easily into the one million dollars territory.
...And that's without the amplification, the loudspeakers, the acoustical room treatments, and all the related rest, including the rest chair.

So basically just one analog source (to play your best vinyls).

She (TT & tonearm) shure looks good though. :b

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______________

Bob, no need to apologize. I didn't think anything of it.

Please feel free to remind me if there are still any outstanding questions. Despite the low traffic we were still quite busy as we had several long meetings with potential/current/new distributors and dealers.

 

[PeterA]

He has the parts for the first 5 arms, and they are all already sold. Unfortunately, all I get to take home with me is the memory of wonderful music and the pictures.

That's quite something if they were sold at full retail. Congratulations.

 

[microstrip]

Gary,

Did you remember to make a nice digital recording of a known LP for our scientific studies?

 

[garylkoh]

That's quite something if they were sold at full retail. Congratulations.

Nothing sold at retail - only through dealers.

 

[garylkoh]

Gary,

Did you remember to make a nice digital recording of a known LP for our scientific studies?

I had fully intended to do that - the Burmester Ph100 was supposed to have a built-in ADC and I brought my Weiss firewire interface and everything. Unfortunately, after going to other rooms and borrowing various digital cables to try and it didn't work, I asked Robb from whom I borrowed the Ph100 from - it turned out that he had removed the ADC..... *sigh!*

The one thing that I did not test before heading to CES.

 

[Peter Breuninger]

I'm not sure what a $30k tone arm would look like but one thing is for sure - it wouldn't look like this. From the photos it has a little bit of a homemade "mad scientist tinkering away in the basement" look to it. I'm sure someone will fork over the money for it...

You'll see the video soon and meet the designer. The arm has a little led light built into the cartridge end. The designer talks about the cost of machining and the design of the leaf bearing. Like many low production projects (Onedolf, etc) the cost is very high.

 

[Peter Breuninger]

Of the regularly posting members, I think only Myles and Amir managed to make it to my room from WBF - plus a couple who identified themselves as "lurkers". Alan Sircom also managed to make it, plus the usual coterie of reviewers who mostly did not have the time to sit down and listen.

Ummm, Gary.... remember me? You pulled on my shirt to get to the room to video the arm guy... cough cough cough. A senior moment is forgiven.

 

[garylkoh]

Ummm, Gary.... remember me? You pulled on my shirt to get to the room to video the arm guy... cough cough cough. A senior moment is forgiven.

cough cough, I've been having many of these senior moments of late. Your videos would be ample evidence that you was there! I'm looking forward to them.

 

[garylkoh]

Some detailed pictures of the tonearm taken with my S100 or Touraj's DSC-H7 so please forgive us if they are a little fuzzy.

The counterweight is decoupled - hung on tiny ball-races.









The armtube is pure titanium as is the headshell. They are both machined out of the same billet so that the material is identical. It seems that when the correct tolerance is used, when the headshell is inserted into the arm tube, the material welds together under pressure.

 

[rockitman]

Thanks for the detailed pics...they are great. Some impressive looking engineering going on there.

 

[mep]

The armtube is pure titanium as is the headshell. They are both machined out of the same billet so that the material is identical. It seems that when the correct tolerance is used, when the headshell is inserted into the arm tube, the material welds together under pressure.

View attachment 7623

Gary-You need to explain what you mean by this. I hope you aren't saying by merely inserting the headshell into the tonearm they *weld* together. Titanium is extremely hard to weld in the real world. In fact, it's hard to do anything with Titanium in the real world. It's such a hard material it is very tough to drill, machine, or weld. The Russians have more than a few submarine classes that the pressure hulls are made from titanium, and hats off to them for being able to weld Titanium together without cracks. It's not easy. All I'm saying is that Titanium is not going to weld itself together because of a tight fit.

 

[MylesBAstor]

Gary-You need to explain what you mean by this. I hope you aren't saying by merely inserting the headshell into the tonearm they *weld* together. Titanium is extremely hard to weld in the real world. In fact, it's hard to do anything with Titanium in the real world. It's such a hard material it is very tough to drill, machine, or weld. The Russians have more than a few submarine classes that the pressure hulls are made from titanium, and hats off to them for being able to weld Titanium together without cracks. It's not easy. All I'm saying is that Titanium is not going to weld itself together because of a tight fit.

Actually quite a few arms use this technique.