But because my Vector 4 was mounted on what was then the most affordable Basis turntable, the 2200 Signature, a model priced at less than half of what the SuperArm goes for, I wondered if the sonic improvements Robert described would be as impactful on this relatively simpler Basis table?

Robert’s concluding words further captured my attention (as well as that sinking feeling): “If you own a Basis turntable with a Vector arm, I can’t imagine a greater sonic upgrade than switching to the Superarm. If you are thinking about buying a Basis and a Vector arm, you should seriously consider stepping down a level in the Basis’ turntable line so that your budget can accommodate the SuperArm.”

Uh-oh.

Once the path before me was undeniable, and I’d made the monetary commitment, it was time to ask my wife not for approval but for forgiveness.

While the SuperArm may be based on the Vector 4, it’s a very different beast. Just look at them. The Vector is a svelte beauty, a swan-like Odette compared to the SuperArm’s Siegfried-like masculinity.

After much experimentation, modification, and testing of how far he could push the Vector, Conti found himself with an arm with much greater mass than he’d expected but also with far greater rigidity and significantly lower resonance and hence distortion.

As they should be for roughly the 3x price uptick, materials and fit and finish are a major step up from the Vector, which I must emphasize is no slouch itself, but befitting its name, the SuperArm is a balls-to-the-wall effort in every way. (Please see the Basis website and link to Harley’s review for greater details.)

Sonically, the anticipated improvements were immediately not just apparent but rather mind-bogglingly so. From the first LP I played—Kissin’s heaven-sent recital of Beethoven’s Opus 111—to anything else I might note here, it was akin to hearing these platters for the first time. The grooves were quieter than I’d ever (not) heard them; and the staggeringly improved resolution, though eye-popping, tells only part of the tale. In every sense, both from an audiophile POV but more importantly from a musical perspective, the SuperArm delivers what we ask for from all great components: to bring us that much closer to the mastertapes, to the musicians performing on those tapes, and maybe, just maybe, to a sort of transcendental state where, with eyes closed, we are fully immersed in the magic of the music, and for that time that’s all that matters, the woes of our chaotic world blissfully forgotten.

Origin Live Encounter Mk III

$1650

In the Encounter, PS’ reference Ortofon Windfeld displayed its peerless neutrality and near-peerless tracking, with outstanding bass and a rich and involving midrange. Highs, though smooth and extended, evinced a very subtle lack of detail or focus. The Encounter also allowed the Dynavector Karat Mk III to strut its stuff with virtually no cramping of its high-kicking style. It says volumes for the excellence of this ’arm that it could put two such different pickups through their paces so even-handedly. 

Ortofon TA-110

$1679

Ortofon’s flagship tonearm combines parts of a Jelco tonearm with Ortofon’s highest-quality bearings and 6N high-purity copper tonearm interconnect. The ’arm’s highly effective vibration control, derived from Ortofon R&D, keeps it from smearing low-level details and produces a wonderfully open, engaging sound. While super-arms costing three times more offer some ergonomic improvements—particularly repeatable, minute VTA adjustments—the Ortofon offers remarkable transparency, low coloration, and precise, natural soundstaging. 

Audio Origami PU7

$3995

As with the Palmer turntables, with which PS reviewed the PU7, there’s nothing innovative here: a fixed-bearing, gimbaled construction that has all the usual features and adjustments of a quality high-end ’arm such as tracking, anti-skating, azimuth, and height (though not during play). Unusual is that each one is handmade—superbly—and easy to set up. Otherwise, there were no significant dynamic or tonal issues, tracking was outstanding, and it pairs especially nicely with the Palmer turntable. 

Helius Designs Omega Silver Ruby

$5225, 10″; $5295, 12″

Designer Geoffrey Owen has significantly advanced his tetrahedral design to produce a captured-ruby-bearing ’arm with extremely low absolute friction and single-point contact on all surfaces. This dynamically balanced ’arm with non-coincident bearings provides a very stable mechanical platform for a wide range of cartridges without adding its own coloration. 

Tri-Planar Mk VII U2

$6200 ($7500, SE version)

This classic example of great ’arm design is now in an “Ultimate 2” and SE version. If earlier models were characterized by tremendous solidity, focus, dynamic agility, bottom-end reach, overall neutrality, and transparency to the source, then the beautifully built Ultimate is quite simply all that multiplied. 

Basis Audio Vector 4

$6500 ($7600 w/VTA micrometer)

Basis Audio’s A.J. Conti has solved a fundamental problem with unipivot tonearms—dynamic azimuth error. Rather than allowing the ’arm to “roll” when the cartridge encounters record warp, the Vector maintains perfect azimuth alignment via Conti’s simple yet ingenious design. The result is an extremely neutral-sounding ’arm that RH has yet to hear mistrack on any LP. 

Kuzma 4P

$7620 ($8750, bi-wire w/RCA box)

This ingeniously designed eleven-inch tonearm from Frank Kuzma uses a unique four-point bearing (two points for vertical movement, two for horizontal). When properly set up (as with all Kuzma designs every adjustment is easily made, although the supplied tonearm set-up jig needs fixing), it is among the highest-resolution, most neutral, most “not-there” pivoted tonearms JV has auditioned, with what appears to be less bearing chatter than any ’arm this side of the straight-line-tracking air-bearing Walker Black Diamond—and for a lot less dough. 

Graham Phantom III

$7900, 9″; $8300, 10″; $8800, 12″

The Graham Phantom III is a “stable” unipivot design that is an advancement over earlier models, using knowledge gained from the Phantom Elite. The patented Magneglide magnetic stabilization bearing interface serves to give the Phantom its stable feeling when playing records. The ’arm is available with two mounting options (custom Graham or SME-type) and in three armwand lengths, which gives the end-user a variety of configuration options. The baseline performance of the Phantom III is outstanding. With such a tonearm, connected cartridges are more likely to show their individual characters more clearly—and recorded music is more likely to sound its best. 

Graham Phantom Elite

$13,750, 9″; $14,250, 10″; $14,750, 12″ (w/extra counterweights)

Although the basic design principles, thinking, and features of Bob Graham’s classic Phantom unipivot tonearm remain unchanged, the Elite represents a substantial upgrade from previous iterations, with improvements in materials and implementation, constrained-layer damping in the pivot assembly, a new high-density, non-magnetic tungsten insert for zero-tolerance bearing-contact and high spurious-energy absorption. No other ’arm known to PS can be more accurately and repeatably adjusted to extract optimal performance from any suitable pickup. Partner it with the Air Force 1 turntable, and you get a record-playing system that is unlikely to be surpassed. 

Basis Audio SuperArm 9 and 12.5

$19,250/$28,500

This “swing-for-the-fences” tonearm from A.J. Conti completely realigned RH’s expectations of tonearm performance. As great an ’arm as Conti’s own Vector IV is, the Superarm is in another league. The Superarm’s reduction of hardness and glare fosters the impression of the midrange taking a step back, and with it, an invitation to greater musical intimacy. This purity and “cleanliness” of timbre is alone worth the price of admission, but the Superarm also offers stunning rendering of music’s dynamic structure, from the micro to the macro. Finally, the improvement rendered in the bass—pitch definition, texture, dynamics—is staggering.

Acoustic Signature TA-9000

$27,995 9″ tonearm; $29,995, 12″ tonearm

This fabulous aluminum tonearm is built up millimeter by millimeter via a selective-laser-melting process to produce a resonance-free structure impossible to create by any other means. (Internally, the ’arm has tree-branch-like “limbs” that connect its inner tube to an outer tube, channeling resonances like a grounding wire channels RF). With highest-precision/tolerance ceramic bearings, the TA-9000 is as sonically invisible (and utterly imperturbable) as Acoustic Signature’s fabulous Invictus turntables. Fully adjustable for VTA/SRA, VTF, azimuth, and anti-skate, the TA-9000 (in combination with the Invicti) is one of the most realistic-sounding source components JV has heard; when used with the fabulous DS Audio Grand Master optical cartridge, it rivals the timbral and dynamic continuousness and diorama-like three-dimensionality of reel-to-reel mastertapes. 

SAT CF1-09

€55,000

The SAT, the brainchild of Swedish designer Marc Gomez, will turn almost any LP collection into a veritable El Dorado of sonic treasures. Yes, it’s that good. This nifty device allows top-notch turntables such as the Continuum Caliburn to reach even loftier levels of performance. In every parameter you can think of—dynamics, alacrity, transparency, and refinement—the SAT sets a very high bar, indeed, allying imperviousness to external vibrations with remarkable neutrality through the frequency spectrum. The tracking abilities of this tonearm are phenomenal as it sails through the most treacherous dynamic passages. The treble region is rendered with a finesse that approaches contemptuous ease. It is certainly one of the most significant analog products to emerge in recent years. Note that price stated is in euros. 

Ypsilon Hyperion Monoblock Amplifier 
$93,000/pr.
The Hyperion is a 370-watt, push-pull, hybrid amplifier that can effortlessly drive just about any loudspeaker. Like all of Demetris Baklavas’ inventive designs, it is based around transformers with wide-bandwidth capability together with a tubed input stage. The idea is to provide a little tube magic along with the grip and control of a solid-state output stage that relies on premium MOSFETs rather than bipolar transistors. The results are difficult to quarrel with. Somehow Baklavas manages to transcend many of the electrical artifacts that often subliminally accompany much audio gear as it reproduces music. The Hyperion, to put it another, simply sound less electronic than a number of its peers, effacing, as far as possible, the boundary between reproduction and live music. No transformer hum is discernible even if you put your ear next to the Hyperion’s chassis. A low noise floor is married to granitic authority to produce real sonic magic. The first 100 watts of Class A power and the input tubes meld so seamlessly that it’s easy to forget that the Hyperion is even exerting itself on the most demanding passages. Tonal color, lavish image sizes, and minute details are all rendered with exactitude and an often-breathtaking beauty. Hyperion was the Greek god of light. It’s an apt name for Ypsilon’s bruiser of an amplifier, which sheds abundant light on what’s contained in recordings, old and new.

Origin Live Encounter Mk III
$1650
In the Encounter, PS’ reference Ortofon Windfeld displayed its peerless neutrality and near-peerless tracking, with outstanding bass and a rich and involving midrange. Highs, though smooth and extended, evinced a very subtle lack of detail or focus. The Encounter also allowed the Dynavector Karat Mk III to strut its stuff with virtually no cramping of its high-kicking style. It says volumes for the excellence of this ’arm that it could put two such different pickups through their paces so even-handedly. 

Ortofon TA-110
$1679
Ortofon’s flagship tonearm combines parts of a Jelco tonearm with Ortofon’s highest-quality bearings and 6N high-purity copper tonearm interconnect. The ’arm’s highly effective vibration control, derived from Ortofon R&D, keeps it from smearing low-level details and produces a wonderfully open, engaging sound. While super-arms costing three times more offer some ergonomic improvements—particularly repeatable, minute VTA adjustments—the Ortofon offers remarkable transparency, low coloration, and precise, natural soundstaging.