Your Little Fwend Tonearm Lifter

Little Fwend is mounted on your turntable and set up to trigger a lifting mechanism that raises your tonearm and stylus above the surface of the record after the music inevitably fades out. It is 100% mechanical and will not affect the audio signal in any way.

Little Fwend has provided customers with peace of mind since 2016. Some use rare or expensive cartridges they want to keep from unnecessary wear, others just think the sound of the run-out groove is annoying to wake up to.

If you are the type that listens to music in a mindful and focused fashion, that is great - but sometimes life happens, a drifting thought or someone calling on your attention and two hours later you wonder if you turned the turntable off at all. Not that we are trying to sow seeds of fear, but raise your hand if you have not once got distracted when playing a record - or fallen asleep in the listening room.

While we´re at the subject of fear - let´s look into a worst case scenario. I have experienced this with light tracking cartridges a couple of times at the summer cabin while moving the lawn or coming back after a swim. Due to several hours of accumulated dust, there comes a point where this dust build-up will sneak up between the cantilever tip and the groove. After a while the stylus could loose tracking in the locked groove and end up grinding the paper label (which obviously is very bad for your diamonds future prospects. Luckily, in my case, both instances were with a Shure V15, and not the Koetsu or Lyra at home.

I got an email praising his Little Fwend. A customer told me that while reading a book in the mountain cabin three hours drive from home, a thought entered his mind: “Did I turn off the stereo when I left Friday afternoon?”. When returning home Sunday night, the listening room was very hot from the glowing tube amps and the turntable was quietly spinning. His Air Tight PC-1 had been lifted up by the Little Fwend, so no damage done.

The precious diamond at the end of the cantilever has a useful life of 1000-2000 hours before it needs to be retipped. There is no point in wearing this out prematurely if you can easily avoid it. The cost of retipping is not the worst part (unless it´s a Lyra or Koetsu etc.), but the months of wait time at the manufacturer or retipping service where you´re (most likely most played favourite) cartridge is waiting in line to undergo surgery.