  Meson spin splittings are examined within an effective Coulomb gauge QCD
Hamiltonian incorporating chiral symmetry and a transverse hyperfine
interaction necessary for heavy quarks. For light and heavy quarkonium systems
the pseudoscalar-vector meson spectrum is generated by approximate BCS-RPA
diagonalizations. This relativistic formulation includes both S and D waves for
the vector mesons which generates a set of coupled integral equations. A smooth
transition from the heavy to the light quark regime is found with chiral
symmetry dominating the pi-rho mass difference. A reasonable description of the
observed meson spin splittings and chiral quantities, such as the quark
condensate and the pi mass, is obtained. Similar comparisons with TDA
diagonalizations, which violate chiral symmetry, are deficient for light
pseudoscalar mesons indicating the need to simultaneously include both chiral
symmetry and a hyperfine interaction. The eta_b mass is predicted to be around
9400 MeV consistent with other theoretical expectations and above the
unconfirmed 9300 MeV candidate. Finally, for comparison with lattice results,
the J reliability parameter is also evaluated.
