2023 Editors’ Choice: Tonearms $2,000 – $10,000

This 9″ tonearm (a 12″ version is also available) is a step up from Acoustic Signature’s excellent TA-1000 Neo recommended elsewhere in these Editors’ Choice Awards. It features a dual-layer carbon armtube with almost frictionless precision ball bearings and an internal high-quality wiring by Mogami. When mounted on Acoustic Signature’s Tornado Neo turntable, the combination produced excellent soundstaging and instrumental clarity. With a slightly forward presentation, the TA-2000 Neo projected excellent clarity and dynamic agility. Rhythmic pacing was similarly superb. AJ, 326

Designer Geoffrey Owen has significantly advanced his tetrahedral design to produce a captured-ruby-bearing ’arm with extremely low absolute friction and single-point contact on all surfaces. This dynamically balanced ’arm with non-coincident bearings provides a very stable mechanical platform for a wide range of cartridges without adding its own coloration. JH, 204

This classic example of great ’arm design is also in an SE version ($8850) and with a 12″ carbon fiber arm wand ($11,500). If earlier models were characterized by tremendous solidity, focus, dynamic agility, bottom-end reach, overall neutrality, and transparency to the source, then the beautifully built Classic is quite simply all that multiplied. WG, 191

The Graham Phantom III is a “stable” unipivot design that is an advancement over earlier models, using knowledge gained from the Phantom Elite. The patented Magneglide magnetic stabilization bearing interface serves to give the Phantom its stable feeling when playing records. The ’arm is available with two mounting options (custom Graham or SME-type) and in three armwand lengths, which gives the end-user a variety of configuration options. The baseline performance of the Phantom III is outstanding. With such a tonearm, connected cartridges are more likely to show their individual characters more clearly—and recorded music is more likely to sound its best. AJ, 291

Basis Audio’s A.J. Conti has solved a fundamental problem with unipivot tonearms—dynamic azimuth error. Rather than allowing the ’arm to “roll” when the cartridge encounters record warp, the Vector maintains perfect azimuth alignment via Conti’s simple yet ingenious design. The result is an extremely neutral-sounding ’arm that RH has yet to hear mistrack on any LP. RH, 172 and 220

This ingeniously designed eleven-inch tonearm from Frank Kuzma uses a unique four-point bearing (two points for vertical movement, two for horizontal). When properly set up (as with all Kuzma designs every adjustment is easily made, although the supplied tonearm set-up jig needs fixing), it is among the highest-resolution, most neutral, most “not-there” pivoted tonearms JV has auditioned, with what appears to be less bearing chatter than any ’arm this side of the straight-line-tracking air-bearing Walker Black Diamond—and for a lot less dough. JV, 221; PS, 248