2. analog
  3. 170417-161828

A pitch too High!

Recently, I damaged the V2 MM cartridge of Clearaudio Concept Wood turntable, so had it changed with a Grado Prestige Blue. The VTF for V2 is 2.2g while Grado blue stands at 1.5g. I took someone’s help to fix this. He even made azimuth adjustments and it sounded fine. But I soon realised that the sound had become thinner, voice being the primary indicator and just before the stylus landed on the record, it skipped back a bit then hit the record. Sometimes the tonearm would skip all the way out of the record, backwards. I called the guy back, and he felt the VTF should be fixed to around 2g to avoid the backward skip. He did so and that problem was licked and it seemed the voice thinning issue had also vanished. But last night, I put on the first pressing of Aretha Franklin Amazing Grace, and all along I found her pitch way higher, it was all too high pitched and uncomfortable. Seemed the bass had gone missing a little. On my Boulder 866, I could immediately hear the difference when the track was played through Roon. It was not as high pitched, thin as it sounded on analogue. I intend to call the guy again but wanted to know from experts here as to what the issue could be.
128x128terrible
terrible's avatar
terrible OP
44 posts
 

@mijostyn Is this what you are talking about? I have done the test twice in the video:

 

mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 

Yes! Exactly but in your video the arm is drifting too fast towards the spindle so you want to add more antiskate. I also must add that your turntable must be level, exactly level. 

goofyfoot's avatar
goofyfoot
1,383 posts
 

terrible, mijostyn is right. When putting the needle onto the center of the laser disc or blank record, adjust the anti skate so that the needle stays in place. Then just slightly adjust the anti skate so the the arm then drifts very slowly towards the spindle.

However, I did exactly that and was getting distortion. So I found that by adjusting the anti skate so that the needle stayed in the center of the laser disc and without drift, that this gave me distortion free results. Do not set your anti skate this way until you've tried doing it as described above.

 

millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 

That test is misleading. You have to watch very closely to be sure the stylus is skating on the vinyl and not following the groove. In your video it is clearly in the lead-out groove. Some test records have a blank side for this. Best is a 45 LP cut on one side only, leaving the other completely blank. 

All this side bias testing seems to me is missing the point. Because if the problem was side bias you would be hearing it from one speaker or the other, or more in one than the other. Like Mike said, right is outside groove wall away from the spindle, left is inside closer. If you are hearing it equally from both channels (or close enough you can't tell) then your side bias (anti-skate) is correct and it is something else.

atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,953 posts
 

However, I did exactly that and was getting distortion. So I found that by adjusting the anti skate so that the needle stayed in the center of the laser disc and without drift, that this gave me distortion free results. Do not set your anti skate this way until you've tried doing it as described above.

@terrible You can see that depending on the arm you might get different results. A person that I know that makes the Triplanar arm once told me that there really isn't a standard for anti-skate settings. So what works fine for one arm may not for another. So don't regard this comment is contradiction so much as the point that you might have to goof off with this setting to see what works best for you.

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