Oh... SEMI-automatic... I'm sorry. Yeah... All of the best tonearms are semi-automatic plastic fantastics.
"and know it well (CS-5000).
Pleasant to listen to. The real weakness is the arm (or more correctly the bearings). Much of it is made of plastic painted to look like metal. The internal wiring is poor. The ability to tweak it is minimal."
Need help with Dual CS-5000 impressions and experence???? - diyAudio
Hmmm... Is that so?
This item is no longer available. Nope... It's not so. Denon didn't put that arm on their cheaper models either... Hmmm...
Technics and Dual "battled over this issue"? Was it televised? Do you just make this stuff up as you go along? In any case... Technics must have won because they went on to sell most of the turntables manufactured in the '80s with their S-shaped tonearms, while Dual declared bankruptcy in 1982. Technics buried Dual.
Dual's claims of their arms having such Earth shatteringly low mass were in comparison to Garrards and such from the '70s, not arms that were designed after they went under. Dual took Garrard down in much the same way Technics took Dual down. One look will tell you the Dual arm is more mid-mass by today's standards.
The classic SME S-shaped tonearms generally sell for far more than your turntable does on eBay. They have more mass than the arm on the 1200. Again... mass has NOTHING to do with QUALITY and more tonearm mass works better with certain carts.
What's that about the shortest distance between two ears?...
I'm not buying the rest of this crap, so excuse me for not buyng this either. I'm not going to be replacing my 1200 with a Dual 5000 anytime soon... Did you have the 1200 hooked up to the exact same gear and cartridge? Even so... I'd have to say an A / B test on two pieces of gear done years apart would be hard to take very seriously. ;) Doubt if you ever heard a 1200. Most of the folks who still bash them these days bash them in comparison to much more expensive gear. The 1200 is experiencing a surge of popularity right now and your cliches and myths about them just aren't holding water. Back cue and get with the program.
I wouldn't... LOL
Coming here for a good-natured pat on the back for buying a turntable that's not all that impressive and then knocking other's gear for a bunch of crazy reasons, most of which don't even turn out to be true, is poor form. I agree the CS-5000 is an excellent value compared to what some of these new entry-level tables are going for. A little speed stability goes a long way towards good sound in my book... and it sure is a looker. Like I said... almost bought one myself a few times. But, if you want to bash my gear... at least try to come up with some sort of real reason for doing so. Not a bunch of myths, cliches and completely false statements... talk of this "blowing away" that when you don't even have this and that on hand for comparison... and the best way you can describe the differences is that one "blows away" the other... Less than worthless. You've been completely unable to support your bold statement that the Technics arm "pales in comparison" to the Dual arm with anything other than nonsense. The fact is, if the Technics arm is weak... the Dual arm is probably very close in mass (although mass is no indication of quality), semi automatic and probably not put together quite as well.
You mean everything I took apart piece by piece and proved to be total crap? Congrats... I guess....