Turntables, Arms & Cartridges

Inspired by the design of its older Forte S turntable [HFN Dec ’10], the F-Dur’s slightly lower mass (though still very heavy!) TPE-damped alloy platter, carbon-reinforced ‘continuous’ polymer belts and low-noise AC motors usher in a superior performance. ‘Magnetic assistance’ notwithstanding, there is now slightly less load on the substantial, inverted and ceramic-tipped bearing, reducing the through-groove noise to a very low –74.0dB (DIN-B wtd) with the felt mat and EAT record weight in place. Start-up speed is a not dissimilar 7-8secs, but now without any belt slippage, while absolute speed accuracy is good to –0.045%. Peak wow is very low at 0.02% while the higher-rate 0.05% peak flutter is distributed as noise rather than obvious, discrete sidebands [see Graph 1, below].

Despite the sheer scale of the partnering F-Note’s 12in alloy armtube and massy headshell, the primary bending mode is still respectably high at 96Hz even if the daunting 28g effective mass renders it most suited to low compliance MCs [see boxout]. The same arm with a wooden wand [HFN Nov ’24] showed a far lower 65Hz bending frequency but with a proportionally lower 22g effective mass. Curved or S-shaped tubes inevitably have a more complex set of bending, torsional and harmonic modes than a straight tube and we see this here at 160Hz, 290Hz and 430Hz [see CSD waterfall, Graph 2]. Reassuringly (from a test perspective) the modes most likely associated with various discrete elements of the bearing assembly, and headshell, match those seen in our earlier F-Note sample at 460Hz-1.08kHz. Friction remains very low at ~5mg in both planes while the length of the arm, laser alignment tool, adjustable azimuth and VTA make for very accurate setup. PM