Calibration etc. Asthetics Makes Cartridge demagnetisers Winds Makes an high quality arm load meter. Turntable Basics Sell turntable accessories, calibration, belts etc.. Gyrascope A fascinating, highly accurate and expensive turntable speed tester. Van Den Hul Makes a variety of turntable, tonearm and pickup calibration accessories. Merrill Audio This company sells a nice booklet explaining the proper set-up of turntables Technical Info. German article on the theory of RIAA EQ Theory Has a few old (but very good) technical papers on turntable, arm and cart theory. Tweaking your record player A very good article from Stereophile. Understanding The Issues Behind Cartridge Alignment Cartridge Alignment Why Ortofon and Why moving Coil ? This article is a bit out of date, but it touches on some of the issues regarding pickups that come up from time to time esp. here in England, there is always the chant "MM is technically better" to be heard from the monster raving loony linn/naim crowd. The Universal Stylus Not strictly a technical article but a fascinating read DIY The Altmann Arm Ladegaard Arm A fascinating and technically advanced tangential tonearm that you can build. DIY Arm A more conventional and somewhat more sane design. IT-1 A very ambitious project to build a high performance tangential tonearm Please send any factual corrections, dead links, information and/or links that you feel that should be on this page to the page maintainer but please note that I do not have an Internet access at the moment so there may be some time before I can answer.
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With the changeover from acoustic to electric recording and cutting of disk in the 20's the first tonearms as we know them today were seen although these were mostly to be found on transcription desks as most turntables continued to use acoustic means of amplification well into the 50's even if consumer models using an electric pickup tonearm combinations were seen as early as in 1926 in Germany (Ebner as in Perpetuum-Ebner), in fact acoustic reproducers were manufactured in the third world as late as the mid 80's and are still being made in southern Asia for reproductions.
Here we list all tonearms know to be currently in production, for info on older models see Discontinued Arms.
Air Tangent
Swedish air bearing tangential arm much beloved by Americans, a heavily damped armtube made out of magnesium, continuos VTA etc, and a sound to die for, unusually easy to set up for such an arm (air bearing tangentials are usually a bitch to set up and require constant readjustment). The current version is 1-D. Possibly the most desirable arm in the world with a price to match, around $8500 in the US (ouch), somewhat cheaper in Europe.
Audiocraft
Makes an arm that has been described as "basically a Graham with adjustable dampening, easily settable VTA and a tapered arm tube", although it should be noted that it's not a clone, the company has been making similar tonearms for more than 20 years. The only page I could find that had any info on their products was this one hosted by Walrus systems in the UK and describes the AC-3300 and the 12" version that is named AC-4400.
Audiomeca
From what I gather you can only get the Romeo arm with the Romance turntable in some markets, it's an otherwise interesting unipivot arm with a heavily damped armtube and on-the-fly VTA adjustment. The linear tracking SL-5 arm is however available separately mostly everywhere this brand is sold and is supposedly quite good, it's an electronically controlled servo arm rather than a air bearing unit like most of the popular tangentials that are on the market today and also has another unusual feature for such an arm : a removable headshell. Nota bene these arms were sold under the Pierre Lurne name a few years back.
Audio Note UK Ltd.
Makes and sells mildly modified Rega tonearms (There is no structural modifications they just swap the wires). The Arm-1 has been reviewed by Hi-Fi Choise.
Audio Quest
Despite having just released a new line of tonearms AudioQuest has no information on their hompage relating to them. Their current lineup is consists of the PT-9 Basic, PT-9 Plus and PT-9 Extreme. These are all the same medium mass tonearm that features easily settable VTA, damped headshell, removable DIN tonarm cable and adjustable pivot damping. The difference between the models lies in the wiring, the Basic model has an oxygen free copper cable, the Plus model has the Anaconda cable and the Extreme model has the Audioquest Amazon wire, a "perfect surface silver" cable with teflon insulation. The links take you to the homepage of Elusive Disc an internet retailer that was the only site found with decent info on the arms.
Basis Audio
Has a range of tonearms.
Brinkmann
Makes the Tonearm 10.5, It's manufactured in liaison with Breuer Dynamics and is a refined version of their classic tonearm design.
Clearaudio
Bought the Souther tonearm line and manufacture an improved version of the SLA-3 linear tracking arm called Souther TQ-I Mk2000 and also a cheper tangential called Tangent and a refined version of the TQI called Master TQ-I.
Dynavector
Makes a high end tonearm called DV-507, it's an updated version of their classic DV-505 product and counts in at a whopping 1,4 Kg, that is more than some turntables!, it's also the only mass divided tonearm on the market today. Hi-Fi Plus has a review of the DV-507 arm here and you can download the manual in a PDF format..
EnVouge Audio
Makes a high end tonearm called Reference, this is usually sold with their own Envouge 24 Quasar turntable but is available seperatly.
Eminent Technology
Makes a tangential tonearm called ET-II.
Expressimo
Apart from making modifications for Rega tonearms, the company makes the Incognito 500C a modified Rega RB 250 that has a new counterweight and has been rewired (including a seperate earthing) and the Incognito 600C that is a RB 300 that has had a similar treatment, more info here.
Graham Engineering
Makes a well regarded unipivot arm available in a few versions, namely the 2.0 that is their cheapest model the new 2.2 model that features an improved bearing system (you can upgrade the 2.0 to 2.2 spec at a later date and if you think that unipivots are only for low mass MM designs the company also makes the Nightingale a combination tonearm and high end MC pickup just to prove you wrong.
G. F. C. Hadcock
This company has recently restarted production of their long running GH-228 9" unipivot arm, slightly updated from the product that we all knew and loved in the early 80's. You can currently get it in 3 versions, the "Export" version with either an aluminium or stainless steel tube and the "Special Edition" with Van Den Hul wires and better bearing housings. Please note that the company has no webpage but you can find info on this dealers page and that it's possible to dampen the arm with either motor oil or silicone (if you are careful) and that this design like most other low mass unipivots works best with low mass/high compliance carts.
Helius Designs
Another of those companies I could have sworn had stopped making arms long time ago, however one or 2 German turntable manufacturers are shipping high end tables with their Cyalene arm as standard so it must be available somewhere.
Ikeda Sound Labs 
Makes a high end tonearm designed by Ikeda-san of Fidelity Research, a visually stunning design called IT 407, one of the factors that makes it so visually interesting is the does only have a single straight line with the exception of the armlift, all angles are rounded off etc., Ikeda-san says this is in order to get rid of sympathetic resonance's. Apart from that the design is in many ways similar to other high end Japanese tonearms, not the least some older FR designs, in particular it is reminiscent of the Fidelity Research FR-66S, but as such it is made entirely out of fairly heavy metals including stainless steel, aluminium, zinc & bronze alloy and brass, it has a detachable headshell type arm tube as is standard with such arms and the arm does in fact come with a very low weight headshell made out of Rojium. Other noticeable design feature of the arm is the tracing force adjustment which is so precise that a desired value can be dialled in. The arm is available in three basic versions, a 9", 12" and 16", apart from the usual practical considerations it should be noted that the Ikeda arm does not fully compensate for the greater arm mass of the longer tubes in the tracking force adjustment so the 16" can handle only handle up to 5 grams of pressure , while the 12" can handle up to 7 grams and the 9" up to 10 or so, this is obviously not an issue unless dealing with seriously vintage pickups. There was also a limited edition of this arm available that had all metal parts of it plated with gold (BTW all armtube sizes where available), it retailed for about 55% more than the normal models. The Ikeda arm has always had a rather limited distribution outside of Asia and in fact all the models that I have seen have only arrived with instructions printed in kanji, furthermore word has reached us that the production of the 407 is being stopped, however when this was written in Sept. 2005 a number of European and Asian dealers had it in stock and in fact a couple of Asian shops had stocks of the 12" and 16" variants of the gold plated special edition.
Immedia
Makes a high end unipivot tonearm called RPM, optional damping and all the usual trimmings, and apart from the armtube made out of nothing but stainless steel.
Jelco
Makes the SA-520 tonearm, it's an S shaped arm with a detachable headshell mostly sold to OEM's for use on DJ decks, but it's a fairly good arm for the price. The company also makes one piece straight line arms more intended for hi-fi usage but no information on the web.
Kuzma
This Slovenian company makes 3 arms currently, the Stogi S is an viscous damped unipivot design. The Stogi is a similar basic design to the old Dual 555 and finally Stogi Reference is the company's top of the line arm. Note that the company can deliver their arms with a balanced wiring if you request it and that the arms from this company are often considered to be a bit of a bargain like so many other products from East Europe.
Linn
Make the Ekos and Akito tonearms.
London
A little bird whispered in my ear that the International is still being made in the UK in limited numbers, if you looked hard enough you might find a copy.
Mel Audio
Makes a interesting viscous damped unipivot arm named Zeröha, but difficult to find for sale outside of Italy.
Microgroove
Manufactures a fascinating tonearm made out of a flat piece of plastic rather than the more usual tubes, no company presence on the web but their German distributor has more info here.
H. H. Mørch
Makes what may be the most interesting pickup arms made today, firstly off they are almost completely modular meaning that on one hand you can chose an armtube that fits the characteristics of your chosen cartridge perfectly and on the other hand you can start with a stripped down version of the arm and add options like on the fly VTA at a later date when you can afford to, apart from being flexible these are damn good. The actual models are the DP4 and the DP6. Here is a armtube/cartridge optimal compatibility list and if there are any Scandinavians reading this here is the DP6 Manual in Danish.
Morsiani
Makes a high end unipivot tonearm.
Naim
Makes the Aro an unusually refined unipivot design..
Nottingham Analogue
Offers a small lineup of unipivot arms namely the "budget" Interspace the more upmarket Space arms available in 9" and the Anna that is available in 10" and 12" lengths, all ot their arms utilise a carbon fibe armtubes and more info can be had here.
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