DIY Tonearm Calypso

My friend and colleague Daniel built this beautiful direct driven turntable and used Calypso parts for his tonearm which might be inspiring to other DIY builders. Take a look at his clever solutions for adjustment of damping, azimuth and height and enjoy the pictures of this highly individual and brilliant sounding tonearm: The basic concept: The tonearm is hanging at two threads. To prevent it from swinging, the grey 3D-printed bearing body is damped by silicone oil (100 000 cSt) in the black cup below. The cup can be screwed upwards and downwards to adjust the damping by changing the oil level. Each thread can be adjusted separately by moving two grub screws inserted to the transverse beam which is screw threaded internally. If one thread length is changed, the azimuth is affected. If both threads are shortened or longered simultaneously, the tonearm height will be changed. The counterweight assembly is also threaded for exact adjustment of tracking force The ...

Both Calypso versions (cardan and silicone oil) use the same headshell arrangement. In this post I will describe how to make the aluminium headshell plate. Calypso Tonearm uses an adjustable offset headshell. This is necessary, because the effective length of Calypso is not strictly defined and can be set in a range between about 230mm to 280mm. (I would recommend 250mm) By adjusting offset, overhang and effective length, you have access to all degrees of freedom that characterize tonearm geometry. Check this page for a brief description: https://www.vinylengine.com/tonearm_alignment_calculator_pro.php As depicted above, the pickup cartridge is mounted to an aluminium plate which is clamped to the headshell slot using an M3 screw (DIN912) In earlier versions I tried to use a 3D printed plate, but it proved to be more stable to use an aluminium device. Here is how to make one: draw a template with the required dimensions to a piece of paper and glue it on 3mm aluminum shee...

Build your own Tonearm from 3D printed parts:  Calypso DIY Tonearm Project How it all began: Some years ago when I was a student I bought a nice Rega Planar 3 drive set consisting of a Premotec synchronous motor, bearing, sub platter and glass platter. With these important parts in my hands, I wanted to build my own record player and started putting everything together. But when I came to the tonearm (after a delay of some years...), I realized that there might be a more demanding DIY engineering challenge than putting purchased parts on a wooden base and so I decided to make a tonearm. I was inspired by the Well Tempered Amadeus record player with its golf ball tonearm, hanging on two nylon threads (it's actually only one thread) and being damped by silicone oil. It avoided machining the tricky parts of a cardanic bearing and was a perfect start to DIY tonearm making. This was the result: Even if it's a bit tricky to set up, the silicon oil tonearm works very w...