Thrax CB TONEARM

The design skills of Frank Schröder are no where more apparent than in the CB tonearm. Visually simplicity with timeless aesthetic conceals cutting edge technology and mechanical wizardry. Simple principles of physics applied in a masterful way like balancing the mass of the tonearm on the bearing to reject vibrations conducted through the mounting plate that originate from other turntable components such as the motor, plinth, bearing or airborne feedback, any force acting on that point will effectively eliminates external excitation by generating equal forces to all sides of the arm, maintaining the dynamic stability of the system and preventing a deflection of the cantilever effectively ignoring the incoming disturbance.

Another issue are the disturbances generated constantly by the cartridge. Problem here is energy reflected back to the cartridge due to the stiff bearings of tonearms. Here the issue is addressed with adjustable counterweight coupling to sink some of this energy and a wand that is super stiff and very well damped coupling those vibrations to the magnetic centring of the lateral bearing, operating as an eddy current brake, absorbing all the vibrations that reach it. Different type of materials are used to create an impedance mismatch for all the vibrations travelling the path. This reduces energy coupling without being visually noticeable. 

The use of magnetic force is exploited in the anti-skating compensation. Here a system of 3 magnets takes care of this without any dangling weight or spring eliminating yet another source of signal contamination. 

Tonearm effective mass is controlled by the use of different material cartridge mounting plates allowing the use of almost any cartridge on the arm.

Last but not least the use of continuous wire from cartridge to preamplifier with no intermediate contact or joints maintains cartridge signal integrity.