Is there anything wrong with linear tracking turntable technology?

[thewas]

I'm pretty sure the skating force is present no matter what's holding the stylus.

Skating force is the force component perpendicular to the tone arm, so with linear tracking its theoretically zero and in reality very low as there is usually a small tracking error even at those but its orders or magnitude smaller than on normal arms.
Here is some decent material about the topic:

https://www.audioasylum.com/images/Skating-force-Misunderstanding-and-misinformation-about-it.pdf

 

[kiwifi]

I have an SL5 and love it!

Correction - I have the SL-7 not the SL-5. That goes to show how often I listen to vinyl! Still love the convenience of the linear tracker. It just works.

 

[tengiz]

Skating force is the force component perpendicular to the tone arm, so with linear tracking its theoretically zero and in reality very low as there is usually a small tracking error even at those but its orders or magnitude smaller than on normal arms.
Here is some decent material about the topic:

https://www.audioasylum.com/images/Skating-force-Misunderstanding-and-misinformation-about-it.pdf

Well, this is one carefully written document. If it doesn’t convince the reader that pivoted tonearms can never truly be optimized to maintain negligible tracking error and negligible residual skating force after compensation across the entire groove - from the outer edge to the innermost -, then I don’t know what will.

 

[JeffS7444]

I believe B and O is introducing something new this year.

Not new, they are vintage products which have been refurbished and repackaged as pricey limited editions.

 

[Chrispy]

I remember back in the early 70s playing with a Garrard with the straight tracking thing....didn't impress. Then again vinyl didn't impress much either.

 

[tengiz]

Correction - I have the SL-7 not the SL-5. That goes to show how often I listen to vinyl! Still love the convenience of the linear tracker. It just works.

In the pictures, the SL-7 looks pretty cool - but also a little dorky, not In a bad way at all - with that dust cover shape. It feels like a lot of effort to move the buttons off the front. Does it actually do anything else, or is it just there for style?

 

[Robin L]

I had a couple of linear tracking turntables that I bought at "street sales" in the neighborhood in Fresno where I lived, about 20 years ago. My guess is that a lot of College Prof. types were offloading audio gear when they needed/wanted to downsize. Our neighborhood was close to the local community college, the nearby "Tower District" always had a number of LP outlets, even in the early 2000s when vinyl sales bottomed out. There were quite a few bargains at these street sales. But the linear tracking turntables I bought were not. Both were from the late 1980s, manufactured as CDs were taking over. Both had P-Mount cartridges, and both were mostly plastic and very flimsy. The arms were pulled towards the center of the discs with some strings running on pulleys. That specific mechanism broke down on both soon after I got them.

I'm certain a more upscale example of the type is likely to produce better results, but this is my experience.

 

[lini]

(...) It feels like a lot of effort to move the buttons off the front. (...)

Not really. And buttons at the very front wouldn't have been a good idea, given that just like the SL-10 and SL-15 the SL-7 was also designed for not only horizontal, but also vertical and slanted placement (on the SH-B10 stands), while buttons on the lid probably wouldn't have looked as good. Personally I'd prefer the more elegant looking SL-QL1, though, especially the "black" version.

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini

 

[Eric Natural]

I've always wanted a Harman Kardon ST-7 w/ the Rabco arm

it has the kinda "Jetsons" 21st century-vibe

 

[mhardy6647]

I've always wanted a Harman Kardon ST-7 w/ the Rabco arm
View attachment 462555
View attachment 462554
it has the kinda "Jetsons" 21st century-vibe

The Rabco arm was good, albeit rather unsophisticated compared to the later linear-tracking arms from Technics et al., but the Rabcos didn't age well. They could (and perhaps still can) be rescued as their rubber bits aged into irrelevance.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

I had a Rabco linear tracking arm on my TT back in the late 1970's. For a while it worked great and then it kept lifting off the record after playing 1-2 tracks. The shop who sold it to me never could get it to work properly, so they gave me full credit and I bought a Fidelity Research FR-64s to replace it which I used happily until 2012 when I sold all the analog stuff and went full digital.

There have been any number of radial arms, and conceptually they should work better than anything tangential by virtue of their theoretical zero linear tracking error. They are very expensive and none of them work as well as a $15 Apple dongle.

 

[dlaloum]

I've discussed this with high end turntable afficianodos who think nothing of paying thousands just for a tonearm.

Universally they believe that 'linear tracking creates as many problems as it solves.' Because that's what they've been told by people with a vested interest in conventional tonearms.

That's possibly why we don't see any high end linear trackers.

For mass market a good implementation will be more expensive than a 'normal' arm. Since the market is polarising into budget or high end, with little in between, there's no market for a quality linear tracker which would inevitably fall into that gap, price wise.

As noted above, it is also not what people are used to or expect with a turntable.

I also suspect most companies do not have the required in house skills to build a linear tracker. They'd have to buy in, making it a risky investment if it didn't sell.

I have owned a couple in my time. A beautiful TOTL Kenwood which I've regretted selling for 30 years, and a Technics SL6.

One of the best turntables I ever heard was a Technics SL1200 motor unit, encased in concrete, with an air bearing linear tracking arm. The arm used an electric motor from a fish tank pump which did make some noise and needed to be sited in an adjacent room, ideally.

Some current high end linear tracking arms:

Clearaudio | High End - made in germany

TT5, High Five - A New Dimension in tangential technology, Features

clearaudio.de

LT-1/LT-1S Air Bearing, Linear Tracking | osborn

www.osbornloudspeakers.com.au

Linear tracking turntable is the pinnacle of vinyl playback

Bergmann Audio linear tracking turntables with airbearing technology is the highest high-end of both design and sound in the audiophile standard.

bergmannaudio.com

These are all of the "boutique"/Handmade genus, as are most tonearms today. (and therefore priced accordingly)

In the heyday of vinyl, a multitude of mass market manufacturers produced linear trackers, prices ranged from cheap, to boutique bling gold plated....

Today we have a more limited selection (if buying new - of course) - and no one is mass producing them, so prices are all in the boutique segment

 

[dlaloum]

I mean, it's not completely off-base. Without the leverage provided by a conventional tonearm, you either need absurdly low bearing friction, case in point:

...or the equivalent of power steering. Neither is particularly trivial to implement. (Good luck sensing lateral forces on a stylus.)

Just for the, erm, record, here's a little series on SL-5 maintenance I found:

Many linear trackers, are basically short pivoted arms, on a servo powered track, so the lateral sensing is based on the pivoted arm position - and the pivoting of the arm allows for a degree of necessary "slack"... system can work very well indeed - as a number of manufacturers demonstrated.

having a non pivoting short arm, on a linear track requires far more complex engineering, high prevision, and either ludicrous servo tracking control or frictionless (eg: air) bearing... can be done, but never cheaply! - and the benefits (outside of bling) are typically negligible over the far simpler moving pivot point arms.

 

[renaudrenaud]

Despite to be a fan of the classical Technics Turntables (1200Mk2...) I bought and repaired a lot of tangential SL5, SL7 and SL10.

A example of what I have done

audiofolies - SL7

La première platine Technics à bras tangentiel vraiment diffusée par la marque sort en 1979 et c'est la SL10... Deux années après Technics propose une machine moins complexe qui repose sur les mêmes principes, moins onéreuse et que certains considèrent comme meilleure que la SL10 (HiFi Choice

sites.google.com

I really enjoy these linear tracking turntables.

 

[Petrushka]

I have no confidence in manufacturers who hide the prices. It makes them look stupid, because AI powered searches find the price quickly. No one has to approach a dealer.

 

[Ken1951]

I had a Rabco ST-4 back around 1974 or so. It was a trade-in at the store and our techs got it setup really well for me. I enjoyed using it and it always worked for me.

 

[DSJR]

My kids caught the vinyl bug, so I had to play along. I went through a range of modern turntables - from cheap to fairly expensive - and I just couldn’t stand it. The childhood PTSD came rushing back the moment I heard the speakers pop with the sound of a needle dropping on a record for the first time in 40 years.

So I started looking for something that might appeal to me too - specifically, a technology I’d skipped before switching to CDs: linear tracking.

But I quickly noticed that almost no new linear-tracking turntables exist today, aside from a few obscure offerings like The Wheel. Cool, yes - but with multiple tracking axes and swipe-style controls, it feels like overkill.

In the end, I picked up a recently serviced Technics SL-5 on eBay - and I really like it. Not for the rumble, crackles, or pops, but for its electro-mechanical hybrid design: simple, functional, and remarkably convenient.

Which makes me wonder - what’s wrong with the core technology? The linear tracking mechanism can be elegantly simple, with no need for anti-skating or tracking angle adjustments. And this model, the SL-5, is surprisingly stable on its little isolation feet.

With modern stepper motors, DSP control loops, and precise sensors, building a reliably good linear tracker seems like a straightforward undertaking.

So why is there no market for them?

These Technics decks were excellent (the SL7 was 'our' model to sell, but nowt wrong with the 5 or even gorgeously made 10), but they do now need more specialised servicing on the arm traverse belts and so on. Original Technics styli ran out decades ago and a beautifully-tipped third party replacement I bought (for a half-inch mount version of the cartridge), won't track properly below 1.75g.

A once popular record producer and sometime artist (Rupert Hine r.i.p.), bought an SL7 from me and loved it's ease of use and basic neutrality - back then, we had speakers geared towards a dull pickup, so these techies sounded thin and relentless - how little I knew and realised back then...

Hope the SL5 gives many years of enjoyment

 

[DSJR]

I remember back in the early 70s playing with a Garrard with the straight tracking thing....didn't impress. Then again vinyl didn't impress much either.

I have a Zero 100 original model and it comes out to play occasionally. Mine has an Ortofon VMS10E usually living in it (pic below has a Shure with third party N91-ED stylus) and the two work stably together. Thing is, in this case, it was a design statement really and an opportunity for Garrard to tighten up on critical tolerances (variable speed, better main bearing and thrust ball race assembly, refined auto trip parts, arm bearings and so on, which they did very well (even better by the time of the SB belt drive version which drastically improved rumble/noise figures while ruining the looks). It looked seriously cool originally with white deck plate and brassy fittings. Today, it's a working conversation piece appreciating in value, so I'm happy to keep it in the stash right now.

 

[Ken1951]

I have a Zero 100 original model and it comes out to play occasionally. Mine has an Ortofon VMS10E usually living in it (pic below has a Shure with third party N91-ED stylus) and the two work stably together. Thing is, in this case, it was a design statement really and an opportunity for Garrard to tighten up on critical tolerances (variable speed, better main bearing and thrust ball race assembly, refined auto trip parts, arm bearings and so on, which they did very well (even better by the time of the SB belt drive version which drastically improved rumble/noise figures while ruining the looks). It looked seriously cool originally with white deck plate and brassy fittings. Today, it's a working conversation piece appreciating in value, so I'm happy to keep it in the stash right now.

View attachment 466004

My college roommate in 1971-72 had one of these. Worked well for him. Much cooler looking than my Dual 1209!

 

[DVDdoug]

I found the post with the video where the vintage dealer says he won't touch them because he can't guarantee or repair them.

The air bearing approach sounds good IF it's a simple as it seems and "floats" with no complicated tracking mechanism... And IF actually works well... I guess you could say an air compressor is "complicated" but it's a common easily available thing and the only hard part is making it quiet or locating it far enough away that you can't hear it.

The Gerrard Zero 100 seems interesting but I don't think it's true linear tracking. I think it just maintains a 90 degree tracking angle. It would add mass to the tonearm and hopefully it operates smoothly, silently, and with minimum friction.