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September 2024 — A long overdue update on the Clear Wave unipivot tonearm
It's been a year since the last post, and I owe you an explanation. The plan was to take a short break over Christmas 2023 and pick things back up in the new year. That didn't happen. But the silence hasn't been inactivity — quite the opposite. The past twelve months have been spent almost entirely in the workshop, machining, problem-solving, and quietly getting on with the hardest part of any small manufacturing project: turning a prototype into something genuinely ready to sell.
Making a complex, high-precision product throws up problems that no amount of design work can fully anticipate. Parts made out of tolerance. Design details that work on paper but need changing in practice. There have been many of both.
After completing the first batch of headshells, a 0.5mm error in the finger lift hole positions rendered the entire batch unusable — user error on the CNC setup, straight in the bin.
The arm rest cut-out was also made twice as deep as needed on the original model. The correct finished and anodised version is shown above. The rubber cut-outs are press cut using a custom made die cutter.
Assembly of the arm wands has been progressing steadily — some of it in the workshop, some of it at the dining room table, which is where a surprising amount of small-batch hi-fi manufacturing ends up happening.
Some assembly at the dining room table.
Where electrical continuity is needed — such as at the nickel silver ballast weight — the anodising is carefully removed on the lathe before assembly, using custom black Delrin soft jaws to protect the finish elsewhere. The nickel silver ballast is then secured with Loctite 601 and also serves as the nut for the counterweight bolt.
Nickle silver ballast installed with Loctite 601, this also doubles up as the nut for attaching the counterweight bolt.
A small hole on the inner wall of the ballast accepts the ground wire, secured with an adjacent grub screw.
The cue mechanism and pistons have taken considerable research and development — getting the tolerances right for smooth, consistent damped movement without stiction required multiple iterations.
First production model
First production model
The majority of parts for the first batch of Clear Wave arms are now complete. A few small details still need finalising, along with the user and service guide and the retail packaging — which turns out to be considerably more involved than expected when you've never done it before. Detailed photos of the first production model are below.
The arm mounted on the LP12 with the outer platter removed, showing the anti-skate weight in position.
The arm wand removes from the pivot in seconds — making cartridge mounting and alignment straightforward at the workbench, and allowing the LP12 to be cleaned and dusted without any risk to the cartridge.
The underside of the body shows the hardened silver steel pivot, the nickel silver ballast weight inset into the bottom, and the bias weight on its thread. The proprietary micro DIN connector was designed entirely in-house — nothing available on the market would fit the design.
Another view of the arm wand removed showing the proprietary micro din connector. The main reason of it being proprietary is that there was nothing available on the market that would fit our design.
Copper litz silk-insulated wire is used throughout the arm wand. The arm has been tested with the Ortofon Quintet Blue and the A90 moving coil cartridges with excellent results.
Moving magnet cartridges also work well, though they tend to be lighter and smaller, which means the counterweight needs to be positioned further back and a shim may be required depending on cartridge height.
Clear Wave cable V2.0
Clear Wave cable V2.0
Since the original Clear Wave tonearm cable was introduced and received well, the ambition has been to design something even more bespoke — made almost entirely in-house. That goal has largely been achieved, with just two compromises.
The new cable is built around Gotham Audio's GAC-2 double flat cable with double Reussen shielding — a premium Swiss cable chosen for its exceptional channel separation and noise suppression.
The only bought-in components are the gold-plated connector pins inside the DIN plug and the AECO gold-plated tellurium copper RCA receptacles.
Both the DIN and RCA bodies are machined in-house from black PEEK thermoplastic, with some RCA bodies made in natural-coloured PEEK for contrast.
RCA bodies made mostly from black PEEK thermoplastic, some have been made with natural coloured PEEK.
The Y cable splitter — also machined from black PEEK — is the most complex part of the cable to produce.
Each side requires multiple machining operations, and it's the component that makes the whole cable design possible.
Assembling a cable for an LP12, note the natural PEEK mdin receptacle to add some contrast.
The reason for PEEK
The reason for PEEK
Most tonearm cables use anodised aluminium for their connector bodies. We chose PEEK thermoplastic for two reasons. First, the cost of machining it in-house works out comparable to the logistics and cost of sending aluminium parts for anodising — keeping more production under one roof. Second, and more importantly, PEEK is an insulator rather than a conductor. Using an insulating material for the connector bodies keeps capacitance down, eliminates the need to separately ground the DIN plug and RCA bodies, and reduces microphonics.
The cable topology is the same as the original — the shield is connected to ground at both ends only, making no contact with any of the signal wires at any point.
That covers all four screenshots in order. Does that work with the layout? Ready for February 2025 when you are.
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