[davidperry3]

I am still on the fence as to if a probe would be a cost effective benefit for me.

Don

It sounds like you have a very nice set up. A probe may not do much for you (it also may suprise you). If you do get one I would get a lower cost one first then if you need greater accuracy go with the ruby tiped probe.

[Don Clement]

If you do get one I would get a lower cost one first then if you need greater accuracy go with the ruby tiped probe.

I am not sure how a ruby tipped probe (vs. carbide tipped probe?) would give better accuracy. I have plans to make my own flexure mounted probe that would give extreme accuracy and absolute repeatability. The design is based on the way my excellent London Decca Phono cartridge works. See: http://soundapproach.com/london-decc...ge-p-1209.html
BTW the London Decca Phono cartridge coupled with a 12AX7 tube preamp coaxes unbelievable sound out of a vinyl LP :-)

Often analog beats A/D-D/A in quality perhaps because there is no "quantization noise". An analog in the mechanical world of "quantization noise" is the smoothness of a sliding or rolling bearing which depends on the smoothness (or roughness) of the surface contact in a sliding or rolling bearing. With a flexural bearing the movement is not dependent on the smoothness of a surface and has no "quantization noise" and also no stiction. MIT Professor of mechanical engineering Alexander Slocum described this process of internal solid movement of flexural bearings on P521 of "Precision Machine Design" ISBN 0872634922:
'Sliding, rolling, and fluid film bearings all rely on some form of
mechanical or fluid contact to maintain the distance between two objects while
allowing for relative motion between them. Since no surface is perfect and no
fluid system is free from dynamic or thermal effects, all these bearings have an
inherent fundamental limit to their performance. Flexural bearings (also called
flexure pivots), on the other hand, rely on the the stretching of atomic bonds
during elastic motion to attain smooth motion. Since there are millions of
planes of atoms in a typical flexural bearing, an averaging effect is produced
that allows flexural bearings to achieve atomically smooth motion. For example,
flexural bearings allow the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope to scan the
surface of a sample with subatomic resolution. See for example, G. Binning and
H. Rohrer, "Scanning Electron Microscopy." Helv. Phys Acta. Vol. 55, 1982, pp.
726-735." '

Don