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Yes, I do! 
Straight tonearms (especially the Vestax ASTS tonearm, because it is so short) degrade the sound quality of the record. They do this for the following reasons.
The tonearm has a fixed pivot point. fact. You can't move the tonearm swivel from one place to another. The needle, therefore, through simple geometry, cannot possibly be perpendicular to the record at every possible place on the record. Also through simple geometry, it is a fact that the longer the tonearm, the less the angle deviation from perfectly straight at any given point, which is what you want. So, therefore, the shorter the tonearm, the less likely it is to be perfectly straight in the groove.
The reason this is bad is because the needle was only designed to go in to the record at the correct angle. The further away it is from the correct angle, the less well it is doing its job. When you have a large angle of deviation, you will get noticable phase difference between the right and the left channels. That is to say, waveforms that are coming out of the right speaker will be slightly ahead of those coming out of the left speaker, or vice versa depending on whether the record is before or after the halfway point (the needle will be fully perpendicular at 50% play time).This is more noticable the greater the angle, and hence one of the reasons why short tonearms are worse than longer ones.
Another reason is that the greater the angle of deviation from straight, the more damage is going to be done to the needle and the record. The needles just aren't designed to go through the record sideways!
There is absolutely nothing wrong with straight tonearms as a rule; if it is a long, straight tonearm then it is just as good as a long, S-shaped tonearm (as long as the headshell is mounted at an angle) as the shape of the tonearm is irrelevant, its just the distance from the pivot that counts. It's just that straight tonearm systems from the likes of Vestax and Stanton are always too short, and hence giving bad sound quality and damaging your records.
Shit! I've been wnating to write that for a long time to finally clear up this issue, but I just have never got round to it. Good to have finally got it off my chest!
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Turntables?
so I'm thinking of buying a Numark turntable instead, are the Numarks any good? Which model in that case is the best? Or do u recommend some other turntable? remember it can't cost a fortune..
