FX-R
We believe F•X (pat pend) a milestone in arm design.
(F•X is pronounced: F dot cross)
Is FX-R II now the the best arm in the World?
(...Perhaps not as fantastic a claim as you might think. Read on)
Funk's new F•X(pat pend) technology was launched on an unsuspecting public for the first time at the Bristol show in 2008.
Visitors then commented as follows:
" I spent twenty minutes in the Funk room talking to AK and listening to the turntables. He had three Saffires set up, all with Goldring 1042 carts. One had a Naim ARO, one an SME V and the other had the new F dot Cross R arm which is a rewired RB 250 or 300 with their own internally crossbraced spiral wound carbon fibre armtube. It sells for £1,100 which might sound a lot for just a hot rodded Rega but it made the (£2,500) SME V sound pale and anemic and even the ARO (one of my all time favourites) was put in its place..."
Ongoing development and refinement continued.
With its arm beam, slim, elegant and red, FX-R immediately sets itself apart.
Technically & Sonically:
Technically:
Irrespective of price FX-R, measures superbly, bettering virtually all reference arm in history
- see graphs below.
Sonically:
We can do no better than repeat the following from a reviewer who upon comparing FX-R against a £2000+ world reference was overheard quietly muttering:
"It's remarkable how the music comes through when the arm is not in the way"
That has thrust FX-R instantly into super-arm territory.
BUT based on a fully re-worked Rega 301, FX-R is modestly priced.
We believe it currently heads the field - yes it really is that good.
Bass clarity, midband transparency, treble sweetness, all there. Pretty ordinary?
Music makes more sense and the listener is "ever closer".
Against a master tape, FXR II easily distinguishes with smoothness and balance and openness. It shows just how far the gap is closing.
F•XR II is Funk's ongoing ingenuity in revealing more from the groove.
In use F•XR II is very practical:
An easy-change cartridge mount permits convenient cartridge change.
F•XR II's mounting base is Rega compatible yet has fully adjustable VTA.
Q1:
I have a Rega arm. Do I need to buy a new arm?
The beauty of this program is that this procedure can be done on any Rega RB arm - 250 / 300 / 251 / 301 / 600 / 700 / 900 / 1000.
If you have an existing arm, you don't have to dispose of it.
By retaining the original Rega geometry, new armboards are not required.
Q2:
Is FX-R available as a 12" arm?
FX-R can indeed be customised for use as a 12" arm. Details on request.
Q3:
"I have an LP12. The geometry is not compatible and I don't have an Ittok".
FX-R for Linns is a new configuration. There are two variants. Both are 213mm (Linn geometry). One is with a larger pillar diameter making it a straight drop- in for existing Linn mounts, including Keel. The second has a VTA base to fit an existing Linn armboard.
Available: September 2010.
F•XR II is such a comprehensive re-working of the industry standard Rega arm, thinking of it as merely an upgraded Rega arm does it (F•XR II) a grave disservice.
Think of it instead as a Cosworth Ford or AMG Mercedes and you will begin to understand the transformation.
F•XR II's comprises:
Internal PTFE re-wiring
A new precision machined pillar to replace 301's plastic offering
Good as the original horizontal bearings are, they are uprated to ABEC 7. By reducing friction and hence the load on the stylus.
Gone is the lack of VTA replaced by a sensible VTA adjusting base. This in turn is available in two versions:
Version I is the standard VTA base for use with Funk derived FXR arms.
Version II is designed for use with Rega arms, RB 600 and above, namely those with mounting "wings", which would otherwise foul the VTA base.
Gone is the lack of grounding, the signal is now protected by a coherently earthed tube
Multiple cartridges can easily be changed by a new simple cartridge mount system.
As standard FXR II's external cabling is Rega's cable but it also available with
Straight through wiring from cartridge to Phono plug or with a
5 pin connector and a separate detachable lead of your choice.
And the raison d'etre for all this effort? Funk's new F•X arm beam.
F•X
So, what is F•X and what is it that makes it so special?
Let us first look at a representative range of arms to see what it is we are trying to better.
(We are looking for a straight line, at the bottom. How closely do they achieve this?)
Let us first look at a representative range of arms to see what it is we are trying to better.
(We are looking for a straight line, at the bottom. How closely do they achieve this?)
Here we have a resonance curve from a very well known arm.
It has long been considered a world reference or indeed the "best" arm in the world.
Note the very high amplitude peak sticking out like a very sore thumb.
Even with damping the energy trend would still be seen.
The cost for this arm? £2,000
It has long been considered a world reference or indeed the "best" arm in the world.
Note the very high amplitude peak sticking out like a very sore thumb.
Even with damping the energy trend would still be seen.
The cost for this arm? £2,000
This curve is from an even more expensive, very highly developed "super-arm" from another respected manufacturer. By conventional standards, the results are considered very good.
Despite its complex tube construction, multiple spikes exceeding10dB are still in evidence.
The cost of this arm? £3,500.
Despite its complex tube construction, multiple spikes exceeding10dB are still in evidence.
The cost of this arm? £3,500.
The next three arms are all more affordably priced in the region of £500-£1500.
This particular curve is representative of the performance of the arms available today with metal tube construction.
Such a response has a characteristic signature and masks detail.
This arm is based on modern materials - Carbon Fibre.
Being a woven construction, one could anticipate a well damped behaviour.
Multiple HF peaks accentuate the arm's sonic signature and with one peak exceeding 30dB, clearly this is not the case.
Clearly, pickup arm design is more complex than it would appear.
Being a woven construction, one could anticipate a well damped behaviour.
Multiple HF peaks accentuate the arm's sonic signature and with one peak exceeding 30dB, clearly this is not the case.
Clearly, pickup arm design is more complex than it would appear.
This final curve is from a very popular range of metal arms!
Again, the similarity in bending modes to previous curves and the height of the peaks demonstrates clearly the underlying problem of the conventional metal 9" arm.
The above curves all represent whatever the arm is that you have been listening to over past decades.
The graphs are all equivalent in terms of scale.
They are not specially selected to show one or other at its worst.
They have not been "doctored" in any way.
Such large spikes means that all are strongly characterful.
Establishing which is "better" is not easy and can only come down to personal preference.
"But how is this? Aren't tubes stiff?"
The above curves shows us that they aren't.
It is the very simplicity of a tube which leads us to "believe" them to be rigid.
But like wind chimes, they "ring".
£200, £2,000, £3,500 it makes little difference. If they are tubes, they cannot help but ring.
"What if we stuff them full of damping? Won't that deal with the problem?"
1. Damping increases the mass of the tube - not a good thing.
2. It doesn't solve the problems with the main bending modes.
3. The sound doesn't improve, in fact it becomes leaden and dead.
If we look at speakers, typically they achieve responses of + / - 3dB.
Would you then listen to, let alone buy a speaker with a response + / - 15 dB?
Yet from the above we can see that the arms we have all been listening to, without exception, all have abysmally poor performance...and we consider them good!
Fortunately this sorry state of affairs is now at and end.
Now let us see what the future holds...and there's no going back.
The graphs are all equivalent in terms of scale.
They are not specially selected to show one or other at its worst.
They have not been "doctored" in any way.
Such large spikes means that all are strongly characterful.
Establishing which is "better" is not easy and can only come down to personal preference.
"But how is this? Aren't tubes stiff?"
The above curves shows us that they aren't.
It is the very simplicity of a tube which leads us to "believe" them to be rigid.
But like wind chimes, they "ring".
£200, £2,000, £3,500 it makes little difference. If they are tubes, they cannot help but ring.
"What if we stuff them full of damping? Won't that deal with the problem?"
1. Damping increases the mass of the tube - not a good thing.
2. It doesn't solve the problems with the main bending modes.
3. The sound doesn't improve, in fact it becomes leaden and dead.
If we look at speakers, typically they achieve responses of + / - 3dB.
Would you then listen to, let alone buy a speaker with a response + / - 15 dB?
Yet from the above we can see that the arms we have all been listening to, without exception, all have abysmally poor performance...and we consider them good!
Fortunately this sorry state of affairs is now at and end.
Now let us see what the future holds...and there's no going back.
Taken from HiFi World, this really is the curve of FX-R.
No crazy peaks. No HF spikes.
all with no damping.
Simply, no energy!
At + / - 3dB, only FX-R is comparable with that of a speaker's response.
This arm ought to sound dramatically different to all others.
HiFi Choice concluded FX-R outperformed the SME V.
"Giant slaying performance"
No crazy peaks. No HF spikes.
all with no damping.
Simply, no energy!
At + / - 3dB, only FX-R is comparable with that of a speaker's response.
This arm ought to sound dramatically different to all others.
HiFi Choice concluded FX-R outperformed the SME V.
"Giant slaying performance"
As to "why?", then read on...
The answer...techy bits (sort of)
Clearly we need a better mental picture to help us accept what is happening.
We all know Carbon Fibre is stiff.
Look then at a 'stiff' fishing rod with a weight fixed at the end.
This is an almost ideal equivalent to our arm.
Being long slows things down, allowing us much better insight.
Twisting the rod takes two hands, but try it. Nothing happens. It really is stiff.
Flex it. It takes one hand. It bounces: up - down / left - right and by very large amounts.
No amount of rubber strips wrapped around in order to damp this action will stop the flexing.
Damping simply does not work.
But how does this relate to playing records?
The stylus in the groove moves up and down (left and right) as it tracks.
It is like flexing the fishing rod.
It is NOT like trying to twist it.
So our cartridge sends energy along the arm tube where as we have seen tube (arm) behaviour is very poor.
Our model really works and we can see how those resonant curves exist - and they are not easy to stop.
But there is worse to come.
A "Perfect" Arm.
First bending mode - shown in red
The stylus is now not at its correct tracing angle.
Higher order bending modes
Resonant flexing of the tube shortens its effective length as shown
The cartridge moves. The geometry alters.
Resonant flexing of the tube shortens its effective length as shown
The cartridge moves. The geometry alters.
As can be seen, a dramatic consequence to resonance / tube flexure is that the arm actually gets shorter, altering our geometry and affects the tracing!
Not only are the problems so much worse than we thought, in over 100 years of arm design, not one single manufacturer or designer has highlighted these problems.
Is it any wonder other arms sound so bad?
Not only are the problems so much worse than we thought, in over 100 years of arm design, not one single manufacturer or designer has highlighted these problems.
Is it any wonder other arms sound so bad?
Having shown how poor the conventional arm is, we had to totally re-think the way we support the cartridge.
Funk has done just that and come up with a radically elegant solution. F•X (F dot cross)
Funk has done just that and come up with a radically elegant solution. F•X (F dot cross)
F•X has a precision internal cross beam bracing construction (pat pending).
It is orders of magnitude stiffer in all directions than a simple tube.
We get the above response curve without recourse to any damping.
With F•X there is no penalty.
It is orders of magnitude stiffer in all directions than a simple tube.
We get the above response curve without recourse to any damping.
With F•X there is no penalty.
Universally, arms are "distributed mass" designs. A lot of mass is in the tube.
From the above curves we can see they are arguably poor.
FX-R, by contrast, is a "lumped" mass design; this follows from Funk's modelling of arm behaviour.
Intentionally it has a low effective mass.
"But don't moving coils need a higher mass arm?"
What they need is not "higher mass", it is "optimum" mass.
Achieving this with FX-R is simple:
Add mass to the headblock to match to the cartridge.
We have seen that spending £3,500 is no guarantee of performance.
With an unbalanced design, ABEC 20 bearings (if there were such a thing) are irrelevant.
If your arm resonates, it is in trouble.
All simple tubes resonate. Period.
"But I've been told that bearings really are important"
Yes, manufacturers may keep going on about fantastic bearings, but is that really where the action is occurring?
Let's try another simple analogy.
Take a car with fantastic wheel bearings but a chassis that isn't stiff. Road vibration excites the chassis and the ride is poor, bearings or no bearings.
Quite simply, FX-R's stiffer F•X beam construction and total balanced design, outperforms:
Cast aluminium
Cast magnesium
Titanium
Wide-bore
Narrow-bore
Wood (which is inherently highly damped)
Tapered tubes and
Carbon fibre.
Is it any wonder it can sound better?
The F•XR makeover...
To create an FX-R and incorporate Funk’s F•X technology takes a surprising amount of time and skill.
Disassembling a 301 is tricky and fiddly.
The first job is to remove the arm tube.
Next the bearings and plastic pillar have to be separated so the new machined pillar can be fitted. This is not just a matter of undoing a few screws for the plastic pillar is moulded about the bearing assembly - it doesn’t just come away.
Far from straightforward, special tools and skill are needed if damage to the races is to be avoided (something all too easily done).
This operation takes time and care.
The components are now given their first performance check.
A new machined pillar, with the new ball races are now carefully assembled and pre-loaded. Check number two.
Next the arm tube is cut to accept the pre-assembled F•X tube. The bore of the casting has to be prepared and machined to size to accept the new arm beam.
A new F•X tube already pre-assembled is then jigged and fixed to the rear bearing housing with all necessary shielding and new cabling.
(Details of the F•X arm beam are proprietary.
Patent restrictions means that much must remain confidential but construction of the beam takes longer than the rest of all of the makeover.)
The transformed arm beam is now fitted to the main pillar assembly.
Another check. The chosen cable is soldered.
The final performance check: Bearing friction, continuity, alignment.
Another FX-R is now ready.