The Schröder reference arm had an unusual design in its single-thread torsion, magnetically stabilized bearing. The arm offered fine-grained adjustability on all major playback parameters such as as azimuth/HTA, VTA/SRA, tracking angle, etc., though certain adjustments demand dexterity on the user’s part. On my test bench, mounted with an appropriate cartridge, the arm displayed the best low-frequency resonance behavior among all arms I’ve tested so far. The resonance frequencies were measured to be between 8 to 12 Hz, with distinct, narrow peaks in both vertical and lateral directions. Meanwhile, I was equally impressed by the cleverness in leveraging the torsion force from its thread bearing to supply anti-skating force, which not only obviated most negative effects of common string-and-pulley implementations, but also allowed for fine-grained tuning to achieve optimal effects.
