Turntables, Arms & Cartridges

The GT-5000's straight, underhung tonearm is very reminiscent of the classic YSA-2 – an upgrade option for the GT-2000 deck in the 1980s. Stax and Micro Seiki also experimented with similar designs, but the concept was not seen again until the late 1990s when Vestax reintroduced the idea on its DJ turntables as the ASTS (Anti-Skipping Tonearm System). Frankly, its deployment here was primarily focused on the arm's stability during 'scratch play' rather than boasting any audiophile pretension!

Fast forward to 2020 and Yamaha's decision to re-visit the straight arm is very much about offering 'better stability in the groove' than obsessing about tracking error. The former is notionally improved by eliminating bias correction and optimising the arm's 'lateral weight distribution'. Yamaha acknowledges that its arm's tracking error can be up to 10° at the inner/outermost area of the LP but a conventional 9in arm, with offset headshell, might still sees errors of up to 5°. This difference in angular tracking distortion is less subjectively troublesome, Yamaha contends, than the distortion due to physical friction resulting from impaired tracking performance.