the Durand 'Telos' 12" tonearm

[mep]

I just want to clarify that this arm will not replace the Talea and will be substantially more expensive. It uses extremely exotic and obscenely expensive materials. It is a limited production arm that I am sure only a lucky few will be able to afford (not that the Talea is cheap). Both arms, even at their respective prices represent a great value given my knowledge of what goes into both of these marvelous products.

What exotic and expensive materials does it use that are outside of the norm?

I manufacture what I feel is the best turntable in the world and I know some of you might find it hard to believe that I would say this, but... I would rather listen to a mediocre turntable with the Talea or Telos than I would a great turntable with a mediocre arm.

Wow! This tonearm must really be a game changer for you to say this. I'm really looking forward to hearing it at RMAF.

Mark

 

[Mike Lavigne]

What exotic and expensive materials does it use that are outside of the norm?

Joel did not tell me what the materials were, and really i did not want to know so i can claim ignorance. but a number of the sessions in my room were to compare different pieces and the specific metals and how the different choices might sound. i know some of those pieces were extremely expensive and quite unique. Joel was committed to building the best possible performing arm and yet did not want to use the most expensive materials in places where it did not yield additional performance. it was engineered to use the best possible materials where it did perform.

 

[Steve williams]

Fascinating stuff Mike. If there is a different sound with each metal is the arm therefore introducing some coloration to the sound

 

[mep]

I just find it interesting that here comes a guy out of left field and hits a home run the first time he steps up to bat. Does he have his own machine shop or is all of this being done using university resources as well? This is kind of reminiscent of what Amar Bose did with using MIT resources to develop the Bose speakers. I don’t know who did his marketing for him, but I think they should get more credit for Bose success than MIT’s engineering department.

I think you said Durand spent around 2000 hours of labor on his first tonearm. That translates to about one year of time which in the grand scheme of things is not much. You have companies such as SME who have been building tonearms for a gazillion years and have top-notch mechanical engineers working for them and machine shops used for the aeronautical machining world and are second to none. And yet Joel comes along and 2000 hours later and with the help of university students, he has beaten everyone who builds tonearms at their own game even though some of these companies have a lifetime of experience building tonearms and unmatched resources to do so. This goes beyond incredible that he pulled this off.

I’m very curious as to what materials he used and where and why they make the differences they do. You guys keep talking about the materials being rare and very expensive so I would assume he is using rare earth metals. I’m also surprised at the choice of wood for the tonearm and maybe that more than any other factor is responsible for the tone he is getting out the arm. I would think that using wood would put the *tone* back in the tonearm. In this high-tech world of ours, using wood for the tonearm almost seems the equivalent of going back to cactus needles for our stylus.

The proof is always in the listening, and we have at least 3 sets of ears on this forum who have heard just about everything out there and they are all using the “game changer” saying to describe what this tonearm does. It must be something special and Durand must be a genius to have pulled off this incredible feat. Again, I’m looking forward to hearing this arm. It must be incredible.

 

[MylesBAstor]

Fascinating stuff Mike. If there is a different sound with each metal is the arm therefore introducing some coloration to the sound

Absolutely Steve. Or a favorite quote that HP used in cartridge review many, many years ago that also pertains to arms: (paraphrased) If all catridges are supposed to represent real music, then how come they all sound so different? That's why simpler eg. minimum of parts is better. That might be a reason Joel didn't use an arm lifter on his original design

It seems that Joel deals with arm resonances in part by his choice of arm material; other designers by damping the arm tube. I'd say if there's been one big breakthough in tonearm design, it's been the elimination of "multiple" arm resonance points and instead opting for a single point and then trying to reduce that resonance's amplitude.

A designer I know improved the Triplanar simply by removing parts that added resonances and colorations to the sound. One thing to remember is that these resonances get added back to the transducer, only out of phase, affecting among many things, the dynamics of the cartridge. That's one thing found out years ago using the Graham with the Parnassus cartridge.

 

[MylesBAstor]

I just find it interesting that here comes a guy out of left field and hits a home run the first time he steps up to bat. Does he have his own machine shop or is all of this being done using university resources as well? This is kind of reminiscent of what Amar Bose did with using MIT resources to develop the Bose speakers. I don’t know who did his marketing for him, but I think they should get more credit for Bose success than MIT’s engineering department.

I think you said Durand spent around 2000 hours of labor on his first tonearm. That translates to about one year of time which in the grand scheme of things is not much. You have companies such as SME who have been building tonearms for a gazillion years and have top-notch mechanical engineers working for them and machine shops used for the aeronautical machining world and are second to none. And yet Joel comes along and 2000 hours later and with the help of university students, he has beaten everyone who builds tonearms at their own game even though some of these companies have a lifetime of experience building tonearms and unmatched resources to do so. This goes beyond incredible that he pulled this off.

I’m very curious as to what materials he used and where and why they make the differences they do. You guys keep talking about the materials being rare and very expensive so I would assume he is using rare earth metals. I’m also surprised at the choice of wood for the tonearm and maybe that more than any other factor is responsible for the tone he is getting out the arm. I would think that using wood would put the *tone* back in the tonearm. In this high-tech world of ours, using wood for the tonearm almost seems the equivalent of going back to cactus needles for our stylus.

The proof is always in the listening, and we have at least 3 sets of ears on this forum who have heard just about everything out there and they are all using the “game changer” saying to describe what this tonearm does. It must be something special and Durand must be a genius to have pulled off this incredible feat. Again, I’m looking forward to hearing this arm. It must be incredible.

Everytime I see the Durand arm, I think of an ad in Stereo Review back in the late '50s for Joe Grado's wooden arm. I think back then stiffness was an issue; obviously this problem has been solved!

 

[jazdoc]

Myles is absolutely correct with respect to the Triplanar. Removing the trough, finger lift and even the inner lining of the counterweights all improved the sound, presumably by decreasing resonances.

 

[naturephoto1]

Everytime I see the Durand arm, I think of an ad in Stereo Review back in the late '50s for Joe Grado's wooden arm. I think back then stiffness was an issue; obviously this problem has been solved!

Myles,

Even before the new Durand arms, Frank Shroeder has been making high end well thought of wooden tonearms for quite some time:

http://www.schroeder-tonarme.de/

and Chris Brady of Teres designed his Teres Illius wooden tonearm in part based upon Frank's arms (I have the original production Teres Illius).

Rich

 

[fas42]

Im also surprised at the choice of wood for the tonearm and maybe that more than any other factor is responsible for the tone he is getting out the arm. I would think that using wood would put the *tone* back in the tonearm. In this high-tech world of ours, using wood for the tonearm almost seems the equivalent of going back to cactus needles for our stylus.

The proof is always in the listening, and we have at least 3 sets of ears on this forum who have heard just about everything out there and they are all using the “game changer” saying to describe what this tonearm does. It must be something special and Durand must be a genius to have pulled off this incredible feat. Again, I’m looking forward to hearing this arm. It must be incredible.

I would concur with this. I don't do LP, but my friend's doing significant tweaking around damping the join between a pretty basic arm on a Projekt TT and an Ortofon MM, and it makes a huge difference. The wood done right would eliminate the resonances and possibly also damp the cartridge's own tendency to vibrate at certain frequencies.

An essentially physical mechanism for extracting sound brings its own set of baggage for adding subtle, low level distortion, just as something purely electrical does ...

Frank

 

[MylesBAstor]

Myles,

Even before the new Durand arms, Frank Shroeder has been making high end well thought of wooden tonearms for quite some time:

http://www.schroeder-tonarme.de/

and Chris Brady of Teres designed his Teres Illius wooden tonearm in part based upon Frank's arms (I have the original production Teres Illius).

Rich

Understand. Just trying to make the point that Joe Grado is one of the unsung high-end designers and that wooden tonearms probably go back to the dawn of time.

 

[naturephoto1]

Understand. Just trying to make the point that Joe Grado is one of the unsung high-end designers and that wooden tonearms probably go back to the dawn of time.

Myles,

No question that Joe Grado has been a real pioneer in our hobby.

Rich

 

[mep]

Myles is absolutely correct with respect to the Triplanar. Removing the trough, finger lift and even the inner lining of the counterweights all improved the sound, presumably by decreasing resonances.

Did you try removing the tonearm cables to see if that helped too?

 

[mep]

Understand. Just trying to make the point that Joe Grado is one of the unsung high-end designers and that wooden tonearms probably go back to the dawn of time.

So do cactus needles.

 

[MylesBAstor]

Did you try removing the tonearm cables to see if that helped too?

Yep and got an incredibly silent background, sideground and foreground

 

[MylesBAstor]

So do cactus needles.

Well maybe there's something to them too

 

[jazdoc]

Did you try removing the tonearm cables to see if that helped too?

Yup, much blacker backgrounds

 

[mep]

I hope you guys realize that I find it a little silly that if a competent tonearm designer makes a tonearm and someone less competent starts removing things from his design and thinks it sounds better it is a bit of a stretch for me.

I for one know that I’m not as smart as SME’s engineers. It would never cross my mind to look at my SME 312S arm and say, “What could I remove from this tonearm that would make it sound better?” I would assume that all of those pieces are there for a reason.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

I hope you guys realize that I find it a little silly that if a competent tonearm designer makes a tonearm and someone less competent starts removing things from his design and thinks it sounds better it is a bit of a stretch for me.

I for one know that I’m not as smart as SME’s engineers. It would never cross my mind to look at my SME 312S arm and say, “What could I remove from this tonearm that would make it sound better?” I would assume that all of those pieces are there for a reason.

watching the development process happen (to a certain degree) step by step of the various Durand tonearms; the main enemy of better performance is a closed mind or a comfortable sales position. and whether it's the Triplaner, or the SME, or the Graham...these venerable designs achieved market success, and then enjoyed it....and enjoyed it....and enjoyed it. as turntables, and cartridges, and phono stages improve continually......arms need to keep up.

i watched removal of various pieces of my Triplaner improve the performance. i wondered how many more performance improvements might be found. in the meantime Joel was doing his DIY project.

SME's are not exempt from this process.

 

[FrantzM]

I just find it interesting that here comes a guy out of left field and hits a home run the first time he steps up to bat. Does he have his own machine shop or is all of this being done using university resources as well? This is kind of reminiscent of what Amar Bose did with using MIT resources to develop the Bose speakers. I don’t know who did his marketing for him, but I think they should get more credit for Bose success than MIT’s engineering department.

I think you said Durand spent around 2000 hours of labor on his first tonearm. That translates to about one year of time which in the grand scheme of things is not much. You have companies such as SME who have been building tonearms for a gazillion years and have top-notch mechanical engineers working for them and machine shops used for the aeronautical machining world and are second to none. And yet Joel comes along and 2000 hours later and with the help of university students, he has beaten everyone who builds tonearms at their own game even though some of these companies have a lifetime of experience building tonearms and unmatched resources to do so. This goes beyond incredible that he pulled this off.

I’m very curious as to what materials he used and where and why they make the differences they do. You guys keep talking about the materials being rare and very expensive so I would assume he is using rare earth metals. I’m also surprised at the choice of wood for the tonearm and maybe that more than any other factor is responsible for the tone he is getting out the arm. I would think that using wood would put the *tone* back in the tonearm. In this high-tech world of ours, using wood for the tonearm almost seems the equivalent of going back to cactus needles for our stylus.

The proof is always in the listening, and we have at least 3 sets of ears on this forum who have heard just about everything out there and they are all using the “game changer” saying to describe what this tonearm does. It must be something special and Durand must be a genius to have pulled off this incredible feat. Again, I’m looking forward to hearing this arm. It must be incredible.

I must say that this reaction is very similar to mine ... I must confess .. Out of the discussion .. I no longer use analog sources so ... and confess great skepticism but stranger things have occurred.

 

[MylesBAstor]

I hope you guys realize that I find it a little silly that if a competent tonearm designer makes a tonearm and someone less competent starts removing things from his design and thinks it sounds better it is a bit of a stretch for me.

I for one know that I’m not as smart as SME’s engineers. It would never cross my mind to look at my SME 312S arm and say, “What could I remove from this tonearm that would make it sound better?” I would assume that all of those pieces are there for a reason.

Don't assume Go into a gym and you'll see pieces of equipment that are downright dangerous or useless and should be avoided like the plague. But a gym has to have them there to sell memberships Same with arms, some things are done for convenience, etc. Hey, HW disconnected the anti-skating because he felt it sounded better and people howled. So later on, he added a defeatable anti-skate device.