This month's Olde Worlde is a treat for all tweakers. 'Ladies and Gentlemen, please be upstanding for the Syrinx PU2 tonearm', writes David Price...

Even though we've only reached the June issue, I'll lay odds on this delightful creation being the tweakiest product featured in Olde Worlde this year The story starts at the end of the seventies with the arrival of Linn's Ittok LVII tonearm. The Tik-Tok put the cat amongst the pigeons in an analogue landscape dominated by the SME 3009S2 (which appeared on virtually every turntable motor unit at the time). 

There was also the Grace G707, which had been Linn's tube of choice (and indeed imported from Japan by them) before the Ittok hit the shops, but this had achieved only limited sales success. No, if you were a superarm in 1979, the Ittok was your nemesis. 

It came as no small surprise then, when a number of dealers, punters and finally hi-fi mags started raving about Scott Strachan's Syrinx PU2. The word was that this curious Edinburgh creation was outperforming the hitherto unassailable Ittok in straight A-B dems in dealer showrooms.

More surprising was that it was neither from the established 'old guard' (such as SME, which later came back for revenge with the Series V) or (what was by now becoming) the Linn establishment. Rather, Syrinx Precision Instruments manufactured, ermm, pregnancy scanners and ultrasonic measuring equipment. 

The Ittok was always a coloured device. It sucked out some of the richness and tonal vibrancy from recordings, and replaced it with an addictive boom-tizz that made rock music sound exciting, but wasn't so hot with classical or jazz where greater subtlety was required. The Syrinx, by contrast, was an altogether sweeter and more beguiling affair with less braun and more brain. Could it be that the mighty Linn had a rat in their kitchen? 

It was a bizarre design. Whereas SME and Linn arms were reasonably sensible and straightforward to set up and get the best from, fettling a PU2 into optimum alignment was a feat bordering on the Herculean. Part of the problem was that the bearings responsible for lateral movement weren't on the same axis as the vertical ones. 

Even more unusual was the fact that one side of the horizontal and vertical bearing sets was rubber mounted, and the opposite set was not. The idea was that this provided a single ground path for the energy in each bearing set. 

The brass arm tube was a long spindly affair that was completely devoid of a headshell. Again, Syrinx figured that headshells are nasty, bendy, resonant things that were best avoided. To wit, the PU2 featured an aluminium 'headlock', threaded to take cartridge mounting bolts, complete with a fingerlift of sorts (cheers, guys...) 

Cartridge alignment was carried out by pushing it up and down the end of the armtube. In this respect, as in many others, a more annoying design you could not find. Still, in terms of optimising sound quality, it worked a treat. By contrast, the hitherto 'minimalist' Ittok felt like a Sony Biotracer arm complete with remote control stylus pressure and height adjustment! 

If this all looks decidedly Heath Robinson, Syrinx surpassed itself with the Mass Ring. Essentially a heavy weight that bolted - by means of three fiddly little allen bolts - onto the rear of the bearing housing, it was a half-hearted attempt to raise the effective mass of the PU2 for it to get the best out of the new breed of moving coil cartridges which were coming into favour. Attaching the Mass Ring onto the PU2 was a process fiddly enough to make neurosurgery look like a quick bit of fun with a scalpel. Come back the Hadcock unipivot, all was forgiven!

By the time the Syrinx was generally available in 1980, it cost £198.38 plus an additional £22.54 for the Mass Ring. That put it very close to the £253 Linn Ittok and far, far above the price of its home-grown competition. Properly set up, many believed it to be better, with a more 'unipivot-like' sound that made vinyl sing like nothing before. 

The good news is that while second-hand Ittoks still go for over £130 in the classifieds, used PU2s can be had for as little as £30. So, if you're an inveterate fiddler, you can pick up an amazing bargain.

Finally, most arms of the PU2's vintage will benefit from rewiring - the good news is that Origin Live do a basic (but excellent) service from as little as £30. Find a Syrinx, refurbish it and  burn the midnight oil setting up the darned thing, and you'll have a great arm at a fraction of the price!