76 August2019nstereophile.com
HIFICTION THALES TTT-SLIM II/SIMPLICITY II
forces that plague traditional pivoted arms, which rely on
generous amounts of stylus overhang and headshell offset to
achieve near-tangency. I’ll leave it to the manufacturer—who
specifies the Simplicity II’s tracking error as a remarkably
low 0.006 degrees maximum—to comment.
At first glance, the very compact TTT-Slim II turntable—
it measures only 16.5 inches wide by 12 inches deep—
appears to be a simple, low-mass, solid-plinth design, not
unlike so many others available today. Only one of those
assumptions proves correct. The platter bearing, drive motor,
and tonearm are indeed all fastened to a single structure, but
that structure is neither simple nor lightweight: The plinth,
like the platter, is machined from solid aluminum—both
have a lightly textured anodic finish in anthracite gray—
the combination tipping the scales at a surprising 26.4lb.
(Compare that to 13.2lb for a Rega Planar 3.)
The plinth is machined with a number of hollows and
grooves and channels, the largest of these to accommodate
its inset platter; as with the classic and no-less-Swiss Thorens
TD 124 turntable, the Slim II’s platter mat rises less than an
inch above the surface to which the tonearm is mounted.
The platter is supported by a machined polymer subplatter,
next to which sits a small DC motor that’s isolated from the
plinth by means of an intricately shaped mounting appara-
tus. The metal motor pulley is positioned as close as possible
to the edge of the subplatter, to keep the round-cross-section
rubber belt as short as possible. Wiring for the motor runsthat secure the gimbal to
the structure supporting
it, then turning a setscrew
hidden away in that
structure before retight-
ening the lock screws.
The Simplicity II does
not offer an antiskating
mechanism, perhaps
because this arm, with its
distinctive geometry, isn’t
susceptible to the lateralStereophile—and two similarly distinctive Thales
turntables to support them. Earlier this year, Hu-
ber sent me the combination of Thales TTT-Slim
II turntable (at $6750, the least expensive of his
two models) and Simplicity II tonearm (at $9450,
in the middle of the Thales line; the two can be
bought as a package for $14,180) and suggested I
give them a try—which I happily did.
Description
Thales borrows its name from Greek philosopher-
mathematician Thales of Miletus (ca. 624 BC–ca.
545 BC), who noted that in a semicircle, triangles
where one vertex is a point on the arc and the
other two are at the ends of the arc are, invariably,
right triangles. Micha Huber used Thales’s Theorem
as the basis for a tonearm whose arc of travel
across the record is such that no matter where the
stylus lands, that point is the
vertex of a right angle that
has the axis of the headshell
and the radius of an LP as its
sides—which precisely
duplicates the angle of the
mastering lathe’s cutterhead
to the master lacquer.
Huber patented this de-
sign in 2004 and since then
has refined its construction
to its present realization: a
9" tonearm comprising two
not-quite-parallel aluminum
armtubes with an articu-
lated headshell at one end,
a split counterweight at the
other, and a Gimbal referred
to by Thales as a Cardanic
bearing—a nod to Gerolamo Cardano, another dead math-
ematician—at its fulcrum.
In the Simplicity II, the individual bearings that comprise
the gimbal, and that enable the headshell’s articulation, are
HiFiction’s patented TTF (Thales Tension-Free) bearings.
Ostensibly, these are ball-and-race bearings, but their inner
races, as well as their axles, are shaped and machined in
such a way that they also offer the benefits of single-point
jeweled bearings.
The Simplicity II employs a clever split counterweight:
Fastened to the rear of each armtube is a weight of semicir-
cular cross-section with a cylindrical auxiliary weight—the
position of which determines downforce—fastened only to
the inboard armtube. To correct for inconsistent downforce
from the beginning of the LP groove to the end, as can re-
sult from such a design under the worst of conditions, an ec-
centrically weighted disc is fastened to the auxiliary weight
and can be rotated and then locked in place to compensate
for imbalances.
VTA is adjusted in a familiar manner. After loosening the
grub screw that secures the arm pillar within the arm-mount
collet, the user adjusts a vertically oriented machine screw
that passes through the arm gantry and bottoms out in a
dimple on said collet; as that screw is turned clockwise, the
gantry and thus the arm rise up, and as it is turned counter-
clockwise, the gantry is lowered. The grub screw is then re-
tightened. Azimuth is adjusted by loosening two lock screws
Above:Thecartridge-alignment
jigsuppliedwiththeSimplicity
IItonearm.Left:Aclean,well-lit
workroomattheHiFiction
factory.ALIGNMENT JIG IMAGE: ART DUDLEY; THALES FACTORY IMAGE: MICHAEL FREMER