The revolutionary part of that idea is doing away with any core material. In traditional MM cartridges, the two magnets fixed to the cantilever move within the coils to cause a voltage in accordance with the groove data picked up by the stylus at the other end of the cantilever. In a core-less design, the two coils for the left and right channel arrange in a V-shape straight over a single magnet at the end of the cantilever. As the stylus needle traces the groove, the magnet follows the stylus motion which causes the coils to output voltage on the order of 0.2mV. That's pretty low for an MM cartridge and more typical for moving coils. But the claimed benefits of being core-less are shorter magnetic path lengths and no hysteresis loss due to the absence of core. Hysteresis loss is caused by the magnetization and demagnetization of the core. Magnetization is a quick process, demagnetization slower and the combination causes irregular magnetic flux. That means distortion because the coils parlay these nonlinear fluctuations.
It took us the better part of an hour to set up the Viroa arm and Blue Dragon cart with the included paper setup disc and our Dr. Feickert protractor. Of course we used micro levels and a precision scale. Top Wing recommend a vertical tracking force or VTF between 1.75g and 2.0g. We started at 1.8g. For the vertical tracking angle or VTA, we went for 100% alignment with the record surface. Worrying about azimuth or perpendicularity of cantilever to record surface was immaterial since the bearing magnets took care of it. The final action item was connecting the tone arm's 4-wire connector to the 4 pins protruding from the top of the fixed round connector housing from whose pins the two gold-plated RCA outputs were fed.
After the TT5 was fully assembled with the Viroa arm installed and adjusted, the next step was fine-tuning the table's rotational speed. Tien Audio provide a nice KAB strobe speed kit without battery due to recent airfreight restrictions plus chart. We checked the speeds with the fine-tune options relative to the L, M and H torque settings. This was straightforward and took just two adjustments. Next came placing the TT5 adjacent to our residential Dr. Feickert Blackbird and connecting its output with Crystal Cable interconnects to our Trafomatic Phono One Reference preamp. As the Top wing Blue Dragon has an internal load of 12.3Ω, we started with a load setting of roughly four times that, i.e. 50Ω. After connecting the 15V lead from the power supply to the base's receptacle, there was just one final check to perform before music could be played: the spirit level of turntable. That proved 100% on the money.
Looks like direct drive but is concealed belt drive.
From the phono stage the signal went to the Trafomatic Reference One linestage, then the Trafomatic Kaivalya monoblocs and finally our 19? 109dB Avantgarde Acoustic Duo Omega loudspeakers. First platter victim was the 1987 Discovery by Larry Carlton. This custom pressing on KC 569 premium vinyl is an example of a very open clear-sounding production. We started with low torque when applying a dust brush is not recommended. Just the friction/weight of the brush alone will stop the table cold. With the TT5, dusting your records is (done) off the table.
