[QUOTE=royphil345]

We Technics 1200 owners have learned to sit and take it from the owners of $1000.00+ belt-drives... However, from the owners of any old automatic Dual... Heck no... I'm not takin' it!!!... LOL QUOTE]

The CS-5000 is not an automatic table: the arm lifts at the end of play, and that's all it does on its own. The arm won't even descend onto the record until the quartz lock kicks in (and it's one of the only quartz locked belt drive tables ever made by anyone).

The arm is very much indeed of significantly lower mass than that of the SL-1200, and of just about any other "S-shaped" tubular arm. Dual and Technics battled over this issue back in the 70s', and there's still no substitute for the old adage that "the shortest distance between two points is a straight line." check out just about any high end table on Jerry Raskin's "The Needle Doctor" website, and you won't find a one with an S-shaped arm.

I owned an SL-1200 and liked it a great deal, but have to admit that the sound I get from the CS-5000 just blows the Technics away (as well as a model from Kenwood, another from Denon, and other duals). I can't back cue the CS-5000, or treat it roughly as one can the SL-1200 without fear of damage, but that's not why I bought it.

Just today I experienced something that only further solidified the benefit of its low mass arm: I have a copy of "Diamonds and Rust" by Joan Baez that warped rather badly. NO turntable I've owned would play the record, even with my Stanton Collector's Series 100 cartridge with the Longhair Brush in use (the Stanton and Pickering brushes did an outstanding job of aiding in the playing of warped records), but today, when I plopped it down onto the the CS-5000 platter, the arm managed to stay on the record just fine (with some audible warbling due to the stretching of the grooves though). I'd say that's pretty impressive.