A Kuzma Mount on a Brinkmann Bardo

Some of our biggest challenges  involve working with other turntable and tonearm manufacturers in order to specify a tonearm mount.

Last Winter, we were told that you can’t mount a Kuzma tonearm to a Brinkmann Bardo turntable.

We didn’t take “no” for an answer.

For every Frank Schröder, Franc Kuzma, or Joel Durand, there are dozens of tonearm and turntable manufacturers who don’t seem to understand that documenting their installations benefits everyone.  When I query a manufacturer about mounting details, I regularly receive responses like: “it can’t be done”, “it’s complicated”, etc.

My standard process for developing a tonearm mount is to gather all necessary dimensions, and then to develop CAD drawings for my machinist. 

Having incomplete data, I reached out to Helmut Brinkmann.

Helmut was extremely polite, but it was clear that I was going to have to persist if I was to succeed in developing drawings to solve the 4Point mounting problem.  Helmut explained that there was a clearance issue on the underside of the armboard.

I opened my CAD design tool and summarized my e-mail discussion with Helmut in the form of a drawing.  This drove further discussion.

While these drawings focus attention on the issues to be solved, their most important function is to eliminate any ambiguity and misunderstanding.  This is especially important when the documentation is incomplete, and when the participants don’t share the same native language. 

Once Helmut and I came to a conceptual agreement, I engaged Franc Kuzma.  Franc and I agreed on the modifications required to establish compatibility with the Brinkmann, and we now have drawings in our collection to replicate the solution for others.

Perhaps the most extreme example of arriving at a mounting solution occurred last year, where we specified a 4point-9 for a Luxman turntable.  The combination of COVID and the language barrier was quite the challenge.  You can read that story here.

I used to tell my former partner:  “if it were easy, everyone would be doing it”.