Arm Three/II

When we decided to develop a new range of budget to mid-priced tonearms to replace our long lived and loved ARM-One, Two and Three,  we obviously had high hopes and expectations for the new design. We are extremely pleased to announce that the new Version II models have exceeded even our high standards. Ladies and Gentlemen, we give you the Audio Note (UK) ARM-Three/II.

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Completely redesigned

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We needed an arm that could be accommodated by not only our own range of turntables, but also by the many designs that were cut for the classic single hole "Rega" mounting that has dominated the industry for so many years. Yet at the same time, we needed something that would truly push the boundaries of performance, design and quality, not only from a build perspective but also from the vitally important sound quality perspective also. This would require a complete rethink of many of the design criteria, and a level of engineering precision and quality that is rarely seen in the world of hi-fi.

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Precision Engineering

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All of the new arms are manufactured in a state-of-the-art machining facility located in Austria. We don't use parts manufactured by any other company for our new arms; every single piece is custom designed and manufactured by us and for us. This was the only way we could guarantee to get the results we were aiming for. Many people thought we were crazy to contemplate such an undertaking, especially considering the relatively modest prices we wanted to offer the new arms for, but such things have never worried us in the past, so why should they now? It took us over a year of painstaking prototyping, testing, redesigning and re-prototyping to finalise the design... and the results are truly astonishing.

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Tapered Arm tube

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The new arms all share the same construction, based around an arm tube that is machined from a single billet of high-grade aluminium. It is tapered both internally and externally, which reduces overall mass and also increases stiffness. The structural rigidity of this design allows the new arms to work with almost any design of cartridge, regardless of weight or compliance. From the lightest tracking moving magnet right up to our own IO models, the new arms allow the cartridge to track superbly, minimising noise and maximising music.

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Bias adjustment is achieved via the classic "falling weight" method. We found this to be by far the most easy to adjust and reliable method of bias adjustment.

The vertical and horizontal bearings are not the usual "ball racer" type. Instead we use a rarely seen "captured unipivot" arrangement,  which provides significantly superior performance to any conventional arrangement.

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As discussed above, we chose to stay with the mounting system used on our earlier generation of arms. But for the new models, we also introduced a method of adjusting the arm height via a threaded collar and locking nut, allowing the stylus rake angle to be precisely adjusted.

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Silver inside and out

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The Arm Three/II uses our own high purity silver Litz wire inside the arm tube, and our own AN-Vx silver cable from the arm base to the phono plugs.