Infinity Black Widow Tone-arm

 The only thing better would be no tone arm at all.

The ideal record-playing system, theoretically, would be simply this;  A cartridge suspended from an infinitely rigid nothing, which would take some of the cartridge's weight off the stylus, leaving the optimum tracking pressure; obviously create and transmit no resonance of its own;  and leave the stylus in proper position against both sides of the record groove, wherever that groove might lead (up and down on a warped disc, back and forth on an imperfectly centered one) without a heavy counterweight to resist first and overcompensate an instant later.other tone arms have achieved proper vertical tracking force - period.

Infinity introduces the closest approach to the entire ideal.

The first tone arm designed by Infinity is an eceptionally rigid leverwhich is extremely low in mass especially toward the stylus end, where the conventional head shell has been eliminated; impeded at the point where the arm's diameter changes, creating a transmission line that effectively breaks up any incipient resonance; and minimal in arm weight and counterbalance weight.

This advanced audio component will improve the operating specifications of any modern cartridge, and reveal inner voicings and an openness you have never heard before in your favorite recordings.

We call this slender wand The Black Widow. And we eagerly invite you to compare it with other tone-arms. The Black Widow will eat them  alive,

 A phonograph record is not a precision instrument. So the Infinity Black Widow has to be.

Records aren't perfectly flat or perfectly centred. But no other manufacturer of tone arms has fully dealt with that fact. So what happens? With an ordinary tone arm, every time a warp in a disc forces the stylus up, the combined mass of arm plus head shell plus correspondingly heavy counterweight creates a distorting press-and-release, press-and-release action of the stylus.

And during every revolution of the disc, with the "center" hole and/or grooves actually off-center, that inertial mass forces the stylus against one side of the groove and then the other.

These forces can cause mistracking and distortion, as well as degrading the crosstalk and spoiling the accuracy of the stereo image.

Moder lightweight high-compliance cartridges could never perform up to their potential and their manufacturers promises until somebody removed the inertial stubborness and excess weight from a tone arm.

Our tone arm won't add tones to those already on your record.

As a turntable rotates, and as the stylus in the cartridge on the tone arm is excited to reproduce an array of frequencies, most tone arms feel an overwhelming urge to add vibration and resonances of their own.  Infinity has at last eliminated that source of distortion.

Where the circumference of our Black Widow Tone-Arm changes, a transmission-line effect is created; that is, resonances are neither passed along nor reflected back to the stylus, but instead are attenuated at the barrier.  Perhaps all tone arms should be designed the way ours is. But only ours is.

Specifications

The Infinity "Black Widow" tone Arm is an ultra-light-weight low-inertia high-tracking jointed-pipe dasmped-knife-edge fulcrum system.

Cartridge Weight:  4 to 8,5 grams

Stylus Force Adjustment:  ±2 gm per revolution of single-weight vernier. (90-degree rotation adds or subtracts1/2 gm of vertical tracking force.

Inside Force Cancellation (Anti-skating):  Fine spring adjustment, calibrated for co-ordination with stylus pressure.

Bearing Sensitivity at Stylus Point:  vertical bearing (knife edge):  0,005 gm.

Lateral bearing (fine miniature bal) bearing 0,01 gm

Sliding Base Adjustment:  ±10 mm (quick slideset and lock type)

Low Capacitance Output Cord:  50 pF per 1,5 m

Effective mass of arm:  3 gm