REED TO THE RESCUE

Following the closure of Jelco, and SME’s decision to stop making its tonearms available for separate sale, Lithuanian tonearm and turntable manufacturer Reed says that the number of requests it received for its tonearms prompted it to produce a new entry-level tonearm with a wood-damped carbon-fibre arm-tube that’s available in three different lengths—9.5-inches (223mm), 10.5-inches (251.6mm) and 12-inches (295.6mm).

Designed by Reed’s own Vidmantas Triukas, the new 1H tonearms use the same cardanic bearing system used in the Reed 3P: the vertical axis has thrust rotation bearings and the horizontal axis thrust pivot bearings. “This construction technique completely eliminates bearing wobble, which would otherwise have a great impact on the quality of the sound,” says Boris Granovsky, of Absolute HiEnd, which distributes Reed tonearms in Australia. The Reed 1H has azimuth, VTA and tonearm height adjustments, a replaceable head shell and can be fitted with either a 5 pin-DIN connector or Finewire 37 cables.

Like the Reed 3P, the new 1H also has magnetic anti-skating. “This is the first time we have used carbon fibre as a primary arm wand material,” says Vidmantas. “After thorough research we found a way to make the carbon fibre arm-wand’s acoustic properties close to those that are typical for wood and by using softwood to damp the carbon fibre tube, our new arm-wand’s acoustic properties become considerably better than using carbon fibre alone, and can be compared to that of a wooden arm-wand.

Available now, the Reed 1H (223mm) tonearm retails for $4,450.