MaNDY'S KAMAGONG TONEARM

[pigdog]

I spent the better part of the day at Mandy's place in San Pablo and i must say it feels like my birthday and christmas day altogether! today i listened to the kamagong tonearm that was made specifically for the Nordic concept turntable, Mandys arm is i beleived a unipivot arm with kamagong arm wand measuring to 12 full inches from the pivot. it appears to be capable of handling heavy carts like the DL102 mono. when mandy set it up for me, i was really in for a treat! or perhaps better yet, was floored by the dynamics of this arm, this arm also features an adjustable VTA
and raising it or lowering it will result in a very obvious sonic changes. the arm was coupled to a butt naked dl103r with a mammoth chassis. the SUT was my partridge 973 with a step up ratio of 25:1 what impresses me most is Mandys zen like setup, a basic audio note 300B kit, no line stage, but a phono stage only hooked up to a pair of lowthers with his DIY cabs, the most impressive quality of this arm is its ability for producing a very beautiful soundstage, and extremely quiet background where details were can be heard even tape hiss this arm is a high performance arm that was lovingly made by the master himself and it will soon be in Hong kong. Mandy gave me a naughty smile when he showed me his latest update, as we have seen his previous work, he uses a stabilizer that looked like cattle horns, this time, he did away with it and instead added a slidding counterweight mechanism in front of the headshell, the idea is to gently and subtly add weight and to help seek that one "sweet spot" during tracking, the arm also has a very high degree of tracking perhaps the ultimate test would be for me to play Telerc's 1812 overture, or Gustav Holst's Mars from his Planet symphony. i was so enamored with the arm that i forgot to take pictures and was too busy concentrating on the music. clearly Mandy was able to conjure Louie armstrong and Peggy lee, what gave me goosebumps was listening to Louis armstrong, his distinctive raspy voice, felt like he is singing in front of me! this was frightening yet impressive, Mandy was able to achieve a filipino made tonearm using a distinctively filipino wood to create a world class tonearm. for this Mandy should be treated more as an alchemist who is capable of turning base metal into gold

[pigdog]

i will send pictures once i set it up with my nordic concept

[mandym]

Glad you liked the Kamagong tonearm/Arm pod.

I think I might have finally found the appropriate configuration/weight of the SweetSpot gadget which is designed to minimize spurious resonances that occur when impact forces are applied to a rod (in our case, an arm wand)at points other than its center of percussion. In my unbiased opinion, in combination with the sonic advantages of wood, the reduction of much of the extraneous vibrations results in such a big improvement in resolution that adjustments in VTA become very apparent.

I am happy (and proud) that this is another Dungeonmeister's brew that is bound for foreign shores!

Mandy

[camotecue]

In my unbiased opinion, in combination with the sonic advantages of wood, the reduction of much of the extraneous vibrations results in such a big improvement in resolution that adjustments in VTA become very apparent. Mandy

congrats on this new tonearm. i agree with the sonic advantages of wood.

larry

[Jon Agner]

Nice

[pigdog]

after nearly 4 weeks on the road, i finally made it back home and the first thing i did after this long trip was to bring out Mandy's Kamagong arm and set it up along with my Nordic concept. and after deciding on which SUT to use, i opted for pair of vintage Gladdings imput trannies mated to Hypertriodes switch box. setting up the arm is a cinch as mandy made it very simple, using a protractor, i was able to determine the distance of the arm and setting the VTF to 2.5 a per dl103r guidelines. so far so good...then i cued the arm with and listened to the music and music it makes! for now i set the arm to a default setting, that is the VTA set to level and will be testing the tracking the ability. hence it is a bit too early to tell how this arm will perform, but already it has shown a lot of promise. for now, i am playing some very familiar music and something not too punishing and later, i will experiment on the VTA placement. no pictures yet! as i am too engrossed with listening!

[camotecue]

congrats on your new toy!

[pigdog]

i think i was able to find the sweet spot for this arm as clearly it is tracking beautifully and man the SLAM this arm can produce! not bad for my first attempt to set up this arm and it is a unipivot one at that! the mammothed denon sounded totally unlike the usual 103s that i am familiar with, this mod made this cart reach teh big leagues! its giving my 47labs mcbee a run for the money! currently doing A/B comparison with the schroders arm and i can safely say both are pretty much head to head in terms of sonic quality and tracking. currenly playing Sade's Love Deluxe

[mandym]

i think i was able to find the sweet spot for this arm as clearly it is tracking beautifully and man the SLAM this arm can produce! not bad for my first attempt to set up this arm and it is a unipivot one at that! the mammothed denon sounded totally unlike the usual 103s that i am familiar with, this mod made this cart reach teh big leagues! its giving my 47labs mcbee a run for the money! currently doing A/B comparison with the schroders arm and i can safely say both are pretty much head to head in terms of sonic quality and tracking. currenly playing Sade's Love Deluxe

Hi Chester,

I'm glad you like the arm.

The arm was not designed as a champion tracker but it tracks like one. I don't know exactly why that is but I'll take it! While taking it through it's paces over several months, I never came across a record it can't track including RCA's torture record Audio Symphony!

For my taste, I find setting the VTA just a bit "tail down" and VTF at 2.7 grams to be ideal for this arm/cartridge. I do the initial setting-up using a good mono recording. This way, I don't get distracted by stereo effects. After getting the VTA set to where the sound is neither too "soft" nor too "hard", I adjust the azimuth. This oft-neglected adjustment is actually more than "icing on the cake". It is what takes the images to dead-center, gives the illusion of depth (yes, even in mono!) and snaps it into focus. I then put on a stereo record to fine tune the VTA until I get a good soundstage. The procedure is repeated a few times; "no pain, no gain".

I am just AWED by your favorable comparison to the top-class Shroeder tonearm! As a designer, I would of course hope that my arm creams it but just between you and me, I would have been happy enough if it didn't get SLAM-DUNKED by the Shroeder .

Pictures, Maestro please!

Chester, have you located the Chinese wooden tonearm maker yet?

Mandy

[Jon Agner]

i think i was able to find the sweet spot for this arm as clearly it is tracking beautifully and man the SLAM this arm can produce! not bad for my first attempt to set up this arm and it is a unipivot one at that! the mammothed denon sounded totally unlike the usual 103s that i am familiar with, this mod made this cart reach teh big leagues! its giving my 47labs mcbee a run for the money! currently doing A/B comparison with the schroders arm and i can safely say both are pretty much head to head in terms of sonic quality and tracking. currenly playing Sade's Love Deluxe

Hi Chester,

I'm glad you like the arm.

The arm was not designed as a champion tracker but it tracks like one. I don't know exactly why that is but I'll take it! While taking it through it's paces over several months, I never came across a record it can't track including RCA's torture record Audio Symphony!

For my taste, I find setting the VTA just a bit "tail down" and VTF at 2.7 grams to be ideal for this arm/cartridge. I do the initial setting-up using a good mono recording. This way, I don't get distracted by stereo effects. After getting the VTA set to where the sound is neither too "soft" nor too "hard", I adjust the azimuth. This oft-neglected adjustment is actually more than "icing on the cake". It is what takes the images to dead-center, gives the illusion of depth (yes, even in mono!) and snaps it into focus. I then put on a stereo record to fine tune the VTA until I get a good soundstage. The procedure is repeated a few times; "no pain, no gain".

I am just AWED by your favorable comparison to the top-class Shroeder tonearm! As a designer, I would of course hope that my arm creams it but just between you and me, I would have been happy enough if it didn't get SLAM-DUNKED by the Shroeder .
Pictures, Maestro please!

Chester, have you located the Chinese wooden tonearm maker yet?

Mandy

Mandy,

I can attest to Chester's assessment of your tonearm, when compared to the Schroeder (I'm quite familiar with the sonic signature of the Schroeder, even though I don't own one). It's in the cost that the schroeder arm will get clobbered

[pigdog]

camoteque expressed it very well and it is resolution that is evident here. i am still experimenting with the VTA and will start with mandy's recomendations, for now it is set to 2.3VTF and slightly raise vta to me it is a bit on the analytical side for now i am looking into a warmer sound plus i realized that my azimuth was off a bit during the initial setup, now it is set to 90degrees

[Jon Agner]

Ches,

you're using the 103r right? Try to increase VTF to around 2.5-2.6 and keep VTA at level, and check how it sounds

[pigdog]

good point will do that

[mandym]

Ches,

you're using the 103r right? Try to increase VTF to around 2.5-2.6 and keep VTA at level, and check how it sounds

Just a word of caution. I have not invested on fixtures to perfectly align for parallelism nor perpendicularity between surfaces, I just use my eyeballs. Consequently errors of 1 or more degrees would be the rule rather than the exception. For example, if the arm looks perfectly parallel to the record, it does not necessarily mean that the cartridge is too! More probably, it is off by some imperceptible amount. The lesson here is trust your ears, not your eyes. Use the visual cues only as a starting point then work from there.

As Jon recommends, increase the VTF. Also for your particular arm, I preferred it slightly "tail down". Maybe there is a slight parallelism error between the headshell and the armwand. Setting it at this position may be equivalent to operating the cartridge at Jon's other recommendation of keeping "VTA at level". Use your ears, you will soon get the warmth you seek.

[pigdog]

intertestingly enough i lowered the tail end of the tonearm and true to what Jon mentioned the music is warmer and less "tingy" the sound is much more to my liking i will stay with this setup as it is nice all around with enough slam and dynamics with plenty of details still what is nice is the background is darker than the schroders. perhaps it is due to the cart of your tonearm. i am using the same SUT although i think the Mcbee 47 labs has a slightly lower gain nonetheless, it still tracks flawlessly, as i am now playing gustav holst the planets : Mars. this is a killer track! the sad thing is my 47labs is sounding muddier !

[pigdog]

ok here are the long awaited photos!

[mandym]

Thanks for the pictures Chester.They are gorgeous. The tonearm/armpod don't look DIY at all. I am very pleased!

Holst's Mars? I hope your neighbors didn't call the police.

Satisfied with the sound? Now, you can do the finale, the "icing on the cake". Put on a good mono record (preferably one with throaty vocals) and twiddle the azimuth by sliding the side weight around. Don't pay too much reliance on the absolute perpendicularity of the stylus since manufacturing tolerances come into the picture. TRUST YOUR EARS!

You will know when you get there. A coherent image takes dead center and the mono signal attains depth, the instruments going way behind the singer! I don't know why this happens on a mono signal but it does, maybe a matter of Psychoacoustics(?). It will leave you breathless!

Over the months that I have used the tonearm I have grown quite attached to her. Although I miss her very much, I am happy that she has found an appreciative master. God speed, my little one, serve your master well.

[camotecue]

beautiful!

[pigdog]

now is the time to work on the azimuth. i will have to dig into my collection, i dont think i got any mono vocals apart from sinatra and nat king cole, but the arm is lready sounding warm. i supposed a little icing on the cake wont hurt! and will let you know how this sounds i must say i have not really tweaked the small counterweight on the left side so wonder how that will sound!

[Jon Agner]

Thanks for the pictures Chester.They are gorgeous. The tonearm/armpod don't look DIY at all. I am very pleased!

Holst's Mars? I hope your neighbors didn't call the police.

Satisfied with the sound? Now, you can do the finale, the "icing on the cake". Put on a good mono record (preferably one with throaty vocals) and twiddle the azimuth by sliding the side weight around. Don't pay too much reliance on the absolute perpendicularity of the stylus since manufacturing tolerances come into the picture. TRUST YOUR EARS!

You will know when you get there. A coherent image takes dead center and the mono signal attains depth, the instruments going way behind the singer! I don't know why this happens on a mono signal but it does, maybe a matter of Psychoacoustics(?). It will leave you breathless!

Over the months that I have used the tonearm I have grown quite attached to her. Although I miss her very much, I am happy that she has found an appreciative master. God speed, my little one, serve your master well.

So, what's the next experiment, Dungeonmaster