SAT carbon fibre tone arm from Sweden

[PeterA]

I agree that the prices seem very high. However, there are those who do and will pay for these products. If those prices help to motivate and enable the designer to keep improving his designs, so be it. I'm sure Marc Gomez is highly employable in other industries because of his expertise. He does not need to do the research and develop these arms, nor do we need to buy them. It will take products like Al M's Yggy DAC to get owners of expensive DACs like the Vivaldi to think twice. This is good, not bad, IMO. Demonstrating what is possible may encourage others to create new products at lower prices.

Tang, owner of the original SAT arm, plus many expensive cartridges and turntables, including the $100K+ AS2000 recently wrote that the modestly priced vintage SME 3012R tonearm plus his Goldfinger cartridge gives up nothing to his SAT and AirTight Opus 1 combination on his AS2000 table. This may not be a surprise to ddk, but it was to me. I hope to read about a more direct comparison between the 3012R and SAT using the same cartridge on the AS2000. If the arms are close, with different strengths, but equally enjoyable, it will remind me of the guy selling his Vivaldi for the Yggy. These are interesting times, and I am glad that people continue to make serious efforts to improve vinyl playback.

I like the very purposeful looking design of the SAT. Priority is on simplicity, build execution, stiffness, the quality of the bearing, and three adjustments: VTA, azimuth, and zenith. Rigid connections are paramount. There does not seem to be anything extra. I respect the approach.

I did just find a discussion on Audiogon about this arm and it seems to question the tracking distortions resulting from the geometries. The null points are also a bit different. See here: https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/sat-30k-tonearm-w-o-r-t-h-t-o-h-a-v-e-i-t

 

[rockitman]

FIY, scientists know that the fable of the frog is not true, unless you listen to cylinders using an Edison phonograph. Contemporary audiophiles will react if the price is too high!

I will quote Wikipedia text, the subject does not deserve my typing time. "While some 19th-century experiments suggested that the underlying premise is true if the heating is sufficiently gradual,[1][2] according to contemporary biologists the premise is false: a frog that is gradually heated will jump out.[3][4] Indeed, thermoregulation by changing location is a fundamentally necessary survival strategy for frogs and other ectotherms. "

$50K is equivalent to "14" SME 3012R arms priced at an average cost of $3,500/unit. Don't get me wrong, it looks like a lovely arm and I would love to have one. Even $30K is hard fro me to justify based on what I'm hearing now and comparing the LP playback to the reference standard RTR tape safety master dub.

 

[microstrip]

(...) Tang, owner of the original SAT arm, plus many expensive cartridges and turntables, including the $100K+ AS2000 recently wrote that the modestly priced vintage SME 3012R tonearm plus his Goldfinger cartridge gives up nothing to his SAT and AirTight Opus 1 combination on his AS2000 table. This may not be a surprise to ddk, but it was to me. I hope to read about a more direct comparison between the 3012R and SAT using the same cartridge on the AS2000. If the arms are close, with different strengths, but equally enjoyable, it will remind me of the guy selling his Vivaldi for the Yggy. These are interesting times, and I am glad that people continue to make serious efforts to improve vinyl playback. (...)

Peter,

Although I think you are partially misunderstanding Tang, I can't resist noting that if it takes a 150K turntable to make a SME 3012R play like a 50K tonearm, the SAT is a bargain!

At David recommendation I got some SME 3012R's tonearms some months ago. I tried it in several turntables, and only the EMT 927 is giving me a truly enjoyable great sound with this arm.

Sorry to say, IMHO for you and me tonearm comparisons carried on the AS2000 are misleading - it is completely different from our SME turntables. But I will love reading about them.

 

[Folsom]

While I'm not saying I would never buy one... they are indeed laughable. It isn't because the business model doesn't work, or that the cost isn't maybe even somehow appropriate... It's how bizarre the price is compared to other stuff. It's more than a decked out Honda Pilot. Compare the size of the tone arm to a big SUV. Now factor in the SAT engineers are utterly laughable compared to the skill at Honda. Yes, it's laughable, and you can laugh while you purchase it, and when you cue it up, and when you tell others how much it costs...

Then again the economics of it's design to performance ratio vs another arm, is it better? That's a subjective difference so it's personal taste. IMO however it's not that great of engineering to achieve what you get, in the way they did. That doesn't mean I won't end up with one some day.

 

[Tango]

Tang, owner of the original SAT arm, plus many expensive cartridges and turntables, including the $100K+ AS2000 recently wrote that the modestly priced vintage SME 3012R tonearm plus his Goldfinger cartridge gives up nothing to his SAT and AirTight Opus 1 combination on his AS2000 table.

I stand by what I hear.

I hope what people implied about GFS with Arche headshell is too heavy and not suitable for 3012R is true so that when I switch to my other modern arms it would sound even better.

SAT is an excellent arm. It plays excellent on all tts I have (Except for 927 that not possible to mount it on). Expensive yes. Worth the money? No. But I personally think nothing in high end worth the money anyway...but it is my hobby. Only my Bose Lifestyle home theatre is an audio gear I find worth the money. What I find interesting is what Francesco said about 3012R only sounds superb to him on the 927.

When I said I would thank Mr.Fremer if he test the new SAT and say it is a bit better than the original one I have, I meant to mean original SAT would retain the value more for me. Little improvement for additional $20,000 more isn’t going to attract new potential shopper or encourage existing owners to upgrade even if there is a trade in program. Owners of original SAT like me are not going to sell theirs. If you ever interested in SAT you won’t be able to but at $29,000 like me anymore. You are going to have to pay a lot more for the new model. Would you pay $52000 for a bit better than the original ones? Less than 70 people in the world bought the $29,000 original ones when a Ferrari F12 owner already said this price is crazy. Imo, Mr. Fremer will have to be super WOWing on the new model to get the new one going. Mr. Myles also has to have original one and new one on the same table at the same time like Mr.Fremer if he were to be convincingly able to say the new one is better than the original one.

I like what DaveyF said about why not $100,000 or $80,000.

Kind regards,
Tang

 

[MasterChief]

SAT is a swedish company and therefore it is very easy to get the financial numbers for the company. The annual report for 2017 say that they had a revenue around $420 000 and a net income around $100 000. They had 2 employees (FTE) and the total cost for salaries was around $ 100 000. Excluding corporate taxes (and they are very high in Sweden) that is around $3000/month/person in salary (before personal taxes).

In conclusion, The SAT-guys would be richer if they had regular jobs as engineers.

 

[mountainjoe]

SAT is a swedish company and therefore it is very easy to get the financial numbers for the company. The annual report for 2017 say that they had a revenue around $420 000 and a net income around $100 000. They hade 2 employees (FTE) and the total cost for salaries was around $ 100 000. Excluding taxes (and they are very high in Sweden) that is around $3000/month/person in salary.

Thanks for posting this - I was just starting to write up this post so will add to your comments here as I think they dovetail with this discussion.

What I find interesting is that folks here who throw disparaging comments about the pricing of these arms don't consider that:

a) there are significant engineering and prototyping costs associated with developing such leading edge products and for small companies who's volumes will not be very high, these costs have to be amortized over each unit sold. Imagine if it takes two or more years of engineering to develop such an arm - you have to pay your staff and for your tools and test equipment. You will also need to build several prototypes along the way and even if the materials and assembly costs are marked up significantly in the final product, the costs of manufacturing a dozen or so prototypes is substantial (also manufacturing in prototype quantities is usually much more expensive than the final manufacturing process and the economies of scale that affords).

b) these arms are largely hand made and hand aligned - from the carbon fiber to the final assembly, these are labor intensive and not just any labor but highly skilled labor throughout the entire process.

b) if you have a unique and differentiated product, that IP has value for which the vendor can (rightly) extract a premium.

c) all free market transactions involve a willing seller and a willing buyer - if either of these conditions don't exist, then no transactions take place.

The gist of the above is that the cost of a component is more than just the cost of the materials - that's especially true of low volume, highly engineered products. As an engineer, my time is worth something and reducing my work to just the cost of materials is frankly ignorant of my contributions and ignorant of all of the factors it takes to achieve something of this sort.

Also, I frankly don't understand people who complain about the high prices in audio. If there was a dearth of lower cost options of reasonable performance, then I could understand, but that is very far from the truth. Today, more than at any time in the brief history of audio, there are many very affordable components delivering performance we would have paid dearly for a couple of decades ago.

Do you also lament the high cost of Ferrari's? As an engineer I view the high end of any engineered products as the ultimate expression of engineering know-how and these products serve to advance the state of the art for everyone eventually.

Now mind you I accept that there are many folks in high end audio simply gouging customers when it comes to pricing - especially true of cable manufacturers - so you have to keep a skeptical eye out to what is real value and what is hyperbole and "aggressive marketing" - i.e. caveat emptor.

Stepping off my soapbox now

Cheers, Joe

 

[Al M.]

Thanks for posting this - I was just starting to write up this post so will add to your comments here as I think they dovetail with this discussion.

What I find interesting is that folks here who throw disparaging comments about the pricing of these arms don't consider that:

a) there are significant engineering and prototyping costs associated with developing such leading edge products and for small companies who's volumes will not be very high, these costs have to be amortized over each unit sold. Imagine if it takes two or more years of engineering to develop such an arm - you have to pay your staff and for your tools and test equipment. You will also need to build several prototypes along the way and even if the materials and assembly costs are marked up significantly in the final product, the costs of manufacturing a dozen or so prototypes is substantial (also manufacturing in prototype quantities is usually much more expensive than the final manufacturing process and the economies of scale that affords).

b) these arms are largely hand made and hand aligned - from the carbon fiber to the final assembly, these are labor intensive and not just any labor but highly skilled labor throughout the entire process.

b) if you have a unique and differentiated product, that IP has value for which the vendor can (rightly) extract a premium.

c) all free market transactions involve a willing seller and a willing buyer - if either of these conditions don't exist, then no transactions take place.

The gist of the above is that the cost of a component is more than just the cost of the materials - that's especially true of low volume, highly engineered products. As an engineer, my time is worth something and reducing my work to just the cost of materials is frankly ignorant of my contributions and ignorant of all of the factors it takes to achieve something of this sort.

Also, I frankly don't understand people who complain about the high prices in audio. If there was a dearth of lower cost options of reasonable performance, then I could understand, but that is very far from the truth. Today, more than at any time in the brief history of audio, there are many very affordable components delivering performance we would have paid dearly for a couple of decades ago.

Do you also lament the high cost of Ferrari's? As an engineer I view the high end of any engineered products as the ultimate expression of engineering know-how and these products serve to advance the state of the art for everyone eventually.

Thank you for your enlightening perspective, Joe.

I work in Biotech, and our products are not that expensive to make in terms of material costs. Yet the development cost is staggering, and needs to be priced in. So I very much appreciate your point.

Now mind you I accept that there are many folks in high end audio simply gouging customers when it comes to pricing - especially true of cable manufacturers - so you have to keep a skeptical eye out to what is real value and what is hyperbole and "aggressive marketing" - i.e. caveat emptor.

And that should not be forgotten either. There appears to be lots of true over-pricing in the high end which gives the hobby a bad name. And it's not always easy to discern between true value of expensive products and fake value.

There are those who pretend everything is fine and well in high-end audio. It's not.

 

[Folsom]

While I can't disagree with what Joe is saying, it's still a laughing matter for the reasons I illustrated. But so is the price we pay for a lot of cheaper light fixtures, we still pay it.

A big problem with some of these euro companies is they don't have cost constraints so they don't factor in bang for buck very well. It isn't that they aren't legit, it's that a truly good engineer doesn't have to use a fortune to turn out a good working result. But really what are you to do when you have such a niche market? Everything is a challenge.

However I'd utterly refute Joe's opinion on vintage gear not being high performance. With speakers I can see the comment being more applicable, but not with electronics.

 

[mountainjoe]

However I'd utterly refute Joe's opinion on vintage gear not being high performance. With speakers I can see the comment being more applicable, but not with electronics.

Point taken - perhaps I should have said there are more affordable, good performing products today than in the past. Though it depends on the category as well - I think DACs, for one, have generally gotten better at every price point over the past twenty years.

Cheers, Joe

 

[Al M.]

However I'd utterly refute Joe's opinion on vintage gear not being high performance. With speakers I can see the comment being more applicable, but not with electronics.

Depends. Digital overall certainly has gotten cheaper and better. And I have a little 50 W/ch class D amp which costs a dirt-cheap $ 65 and is outrageously good for the price. Also, I'd like to see a vintage amp of similar price (inflation adjusted) challenge my Schiit Vidar amp ($ 699), which I bought for fun and as a back-up if my primary amp is down for some reason.

 

[Al M.]

Point taken - perhaps I should have said there are more affordable, good performing products today than in the past. Though it depends on the category as well - I think DACs, for one, have generally gotten better at every price point over the past twenty years.

Cheers, Joe

Aah, our posts crossed.

 

[microstrip]

(...) There appears to be lots of true over-pricing in the high end which gives the hobby a bad name. And it's not always easy to discern between true value of expensive products and fake value.

There are those who pretend everything is fine and well in high-end audio. It's not.

Then focus on the product that you think are overpriced, carry your research and post with responsibility naming it, without LOL in every post.

I usually assume the defend those that I have experience , data or direct information that I can refer, not the opinions of anonymous friends.

There are many products I would not endorse and do not understand pricing or action - my ignorance is not enough to trigger my mistrustfulness.

And no one pretends everything is fine and well in high-end audio - where are you getting this idea?

 

[Folsom]

Point taken - perhaps I should have said there are more affordable, good performing products today than in the past. Though it depends on the category as well - I think DACs, for one, have generally gotten better at every price point over the past twenty years.

Cheers, Joe

For sure, early digital was trash, mostly. Only the 1541 Phillips chip was really worth a pot of beans.

When it comes to cheaper amps and such it's interesting because you need more power for modern speakers, so affordability is a bit different. But you'd be hard pressed to find many budget items beating Dynaco.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Michael Fremer loves his SAT. Our Tang loves his SAT. A good friend of mine with a SOTA system loves his SAT.

Whatever the price clearly Marc is making an amazing product.

I often say that it is not good that high-end products are extremely expensive; it is bad that they are extremely expensive. It is not necessarily that we are paying for extremely expensive materials and perfectionistic or exotic machining and build quality.

Often the high cost is the unfortunate result of very low production volumes, with the builder buying 10 copies of some part at a time rather than 1,000 or 10,000. If Acura made 100,000 SAT tonearms they might cost one-fifth the price Marc charges.

 

[Al M.]

Often the high cost is the unfortunate result of very low production volumes, with the builder buying 10 copies of some part at a time rather than 1,000 or 10,000. If Acura made 100,000 SAT tonearms they might cost one-fifth the price Marc charges.

The price of my $ 2,300 Schiit Yggdrasil DAC is also low because of the production volume and the cheaper parts that buying in bulk gets you.

Just it being a direct sale product delivers a great advantage. If it would be a classical dealer-sale product, it would double in price, to $ 4,600. Yet as designer Mike Moffat mentions, if you double the price, your sales fall to a quarter (at least in the normal market, perhaps not in the super high-end). Which would mean you could not order parts at the bulk discount you can for direct sale, so he estimates that the $ 2,300 DAC would really become a $ 6,000 product if it were sold through dealer distribution.

 

[rockitman]

Typical hi end audio component mark-up by dealers is 50%.

 

[ALF]

Typical hi end audio component mark-up by dealers is 50%.

Actually, the markup would be 100%

Cheers!
ALF

 

[Al M.]

Typical hi end audio component mark-up by dealers is 50%.

I assume Mike Moffat knows what he's talking about. His previous company Theta Digital, where he was the chief designer, sold through dealers.

 

[rockitman]

Actually, the markup would be 100%

Cheers!
ALF

Is SAT sold direct or via dealers ?