Schroeder FAQ Page
About the Wait
It's difficult to wait for your Schroeder once you've made your decision to own one. We understand this.
All we can offer is that your wait will be rewarded.
As you ponder whether a Schroeder is worth the wait, consider the number you've ever seen on the used market.
Schroeders are forever.
Frank works diligently to keep his delivery schedule under control. As a one-man operation, it can vary. Check our
Order Page for udates on delivery times for all products we carry. Frank tries to be fair to
worldwide demand which means very few Schroeders are shipped to the United States on an annual basis.
A Reference tonearm takes about 40 hours to produce. Factor in Frank's attendance at several trade shows, a vacation,
and you can easily calculate the yearly number of tonearms distributed worldwide.
Some distributors may tell you of shorter waits for a Schroeder. To this, we can only answer that a Reference tonearm
cannot typically be pre-ordered. There are too many choices to be made for a distributor to guess at his customers' choices.
While it's a fairly safe bet that a Reference with either a Bocote or Jacaranda arm wand will suit 95% of our customers,
they are also the most discriminating individuals. There are other choices to be made: wiring, finishing options,
counterweight construction (VTF fine adjust), termination, etc. Factoring in the Reference "SQ" variation further
complicates pre-ordering.
With the DPS, it gets a bit simpler as there are fewer options to anticipate.
It's simpler yet with the Model-2. To fill out our yearly allotment, we will typically order a couple of Pertinax arm
wand Model-2's for inventory sometime in the middle of the year. To date however, even this has not improved the
waiting time because they are scarcely ordered by us before someone commits to them.
Ease of Setup
After brief familiarization with their innovative design approach, you will observe how extraordinarily easy all models
are to set up and adjust. While an analog rig certainly benefits from the attention and care of someone expert in its
setup, these designs are a statement in simplicity, ergonomics, and design elegance.
The single new trick one must learn for all of the models is their greatest virtue - magnetic damping adjustment. In
comparison with silicone damped arms, the ease of adjustment is like shifting from a 1-turn to a 10-turn potentiometer
... perhaps even more precise.
We have found most silicone damping arrangements to be crude, hit and miss affairs. Not so with the magnetic damping in
the Schroeder. For perhaps the first time, you will find yourself dialing in the damping without questioning
whether you've under or overshot the mark.
The DPS and Model-2 give up a bit of convenience in order to provide as much performance as possible at their respective
price points.
Arm Wand Material
One of the most frequent questions we receive relates to the choice of arm wand material and effective mass for your
cartridge.
The short answer is that Jacaranda and Tiger Wood (15 grams in 239 mm eff. length) along with Bocote (12 grams) cover the
wide range of popular moving coil cartridges.
It is for this reason that the two materials selected for the DPS are Jacaranda and Bocote. Both materials available
for the Model-2 (carbon fiber and Pertinax) have a 12 gram effective mass.
The Reference and DPS are supplied with a brass cartridge carrier which is optional for the Model-2. This further
extends the cartridge compatibility range of your Schroeder Tonearm by increasing the effective mass by 5 grams.
Our recommendation is to specify an effective mass in the 12 gram range. This, in conjunction with the optional brass
cartridge carrier (adds 5 grams to the effective mass) covers the complete range of moving coil cartridges.
Sonic signature
After sealing and treatment, there is no sonic difference between the various woods.
Material selection is based entirely on mass/compliance as well as aesthetics. You may for
example prefer a long arm (we'll have more to say about length). This would require specification
of a lighter wood then you would select for a 9" long wand in order to maintain the same effective mass.
Carbon fiber has a more "energetic" sound than wood or Pertinax. The alternate choice on the Model-2 is Pertinax -
a resin impregnated paper which is very similar sonically to wood.
Miscellaneious Schroeder Ramblings:
Below is a compilation of posts on various forums which anticipate and answer many of your questions.
Note: the following links open in a new window
