If you have opened this ad, you likely know all about the legendary Technics R&B Series EPA500 titanium tonearm system.I have owned this system since the early 1980's, so it has not seen any pro audio duty as many did.
The tonearm sports ruby bearings, on the fly VTA setup, decoupled and damped counterweights, tapered titanium tonearm wands. The EPA500 system offered 7 specialized wands, three of which had captive phono cartridges for pro use. They were all made of Titanium and tapered in order to maximize elimination of undue resonance. This tonearm system has been my reference since the early 1980's. It has been mounted on tables such as the original VPI turntable, several VPI TNT models, the exotic Saskia turntable, and finally the Merrill-Williams R.E.A.L. 101 and 101.2 turntables. All with superb results. I own the three most important in the series, the 'M', ''G', and "E". The 'M' is perfect for cartridges of medium mass and compliance. I use it almost exclusively. The "G" is optimized for cartridges of greater mass and less compliance, such as early moving coils, and today's heaviest mass cartridges,eg. Koetsu, Shilabi, Miyabi, Zu Audio/Denon, and the ZYX Omega with the big Lapis Lazuli stone in front of it. The "E" wand is optimized for low mass and high compliance cartridges such as the strain gauge cartridges, moving iron cartridges,
It's perfect for Ortofon's and Soundsmith cartridges, for instance. Each wand can be fully hot swapped with no balancing necessary once they are already pre-balanced. Just simple plug and play. Given the tonearm's age, I have owned it since the early 80's, each wand has been fully rewired with Cardas tonearm wire by Garth Phillipe of Incognito in Germany.
Gath's wire looms are used exclusively by Frank Schroeder. The EPA B500 base has also been re-wired to captive balanced connections. The stock B500 base has 3 breaks in the connection including a circuit board to facilitate mass production, the custom rewire completely eliminates all of the breaks to a single unbroken flying lead directly to the XLR contacts. I am providing this level of detail in order to put into context the history and investment that has been made in this EPA500 System. The rewire of the B500 and flying balanced XLR leads ran $600.
Each wand was rewired at a cost of $150 each plus round trip shipping to Germany. Cardas tonearm wire was used for this. The "E" and the "G" wands were not part of the initial EPA500 Series and were added by Technics to the series on in a very limited basis in order to meet the demands of the ever-diversifying phono cartridge marketplace. The "E" wand has seen little use other than with the original ADC XLM series as well as the early Ortofon moving magnet cartridges. The "M" wand has been my staple wand for a long time. I have used it exclusively on cartridges ranging from Accuphase AC1,2,and 3, Monster Cable cartridge, several ZYX cartridges, etc. The "G" wand is designed for use with the heavyweight moving coil cartridges with relatively low cantiever compliance such as th ZU/Denon, Koetsu, ZYX Omega, etc. The all-important B500 base was cleaned, regreased and conditioned at the time that it was re-wired with flying balanced leads. The the on-the-fly VTA is super smooth and can be adjusted while playing a record without disturbing the tonearm or making the stylus skip. After so many years, I have decided to retire much of my system and significantly downsize.
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