Electronic stylus force gauge question

One definitely needs to adjust by ear after initial setup. The value in having an accurate scale is one knowing your in the ballpark and two being able to return to a specific weight after removing a particular cartridge. If you don't change carts very often then it's not as necessary. I only have one arm now and several carts so once I have a certain cart dialed in I note the weight I had it at last for next time. This saves time dialing it in latter.

Definitely have had the same experience with those scales. For me, it was never the same reading twice. Total rip off. I use the Shure with my Delos and for me 1.75 (assuming the Shure is accurate) tracks and sounds the best.

I used the less than $15 pocket scale from ebay. Very accurate. Nickel weighs out to 5.00g and my audio shop had a 5.01g weight for calibrating and the scale was dead on. Has a tare button and does US / metric. Also comes with an extra battery and case.

pocket scale - no affiliation

Sbrownnw...thanks for the link to that scale! You can buy several of these for the price of one of the other scales.

I'm going to order one and try it.

It's evident from several recent threads that Actusreus is not yet comfortable with trusting his ears and prefers the security of measurements, even measurements that don't necessarily correlate to optimal sonics. If he believes that every Lyra is so free of sample deviations that precisely 1.75g of downforce is optimal, well, Jonathon Carr himself would tell him otherwise but we all have our own way of enjoying this silly hobby. It certainly won't do any harm to play at that downforce. ;-)

Doug,
You're misinterpreting my posts, or perhaps I'm not expressing myself clearly enough. I don't recall ever stating that I don't trust my ears; what I do criticize, however, is the blank assertion that only adjusting by ear can result in optimal sound in an absolute sense. What you might find optimal might not be optimal for another. Especially since your taste in music is vastly different from many fellow audiophiles'.

I also find your statements about the Delos a bit ridiculous. Even more so since you don't own one. It actually was J. Carr who told me and every other Delos owner that the cartridge performs best at a VTF of 1.75 g, in plain English in the Delos' manual. It was designed that way. In fact, every Delos and Kleos owner seems to uniformly be of the opinion that they do sound best at 1.75 g, even in this thread. So I find your criticism a bit ignorant. And if you trust your ears so much, why do you even have a scale at all? And why use protractors at all? Just slap that bad boy on and adjust by listening.

I'm not going to make apologies or made feel embarrassed because I want to know whether I'm tracking at what one of the most accomplished cartridge designers in the world with a long-known religious attention to and focus on the quality of his product recommends, which happens to sound heavenly to me as well. Unlike you (and frankly most likely 90% of audiophiles out there), I cannot hear the changes in the sound at the level you can. I fully realize that you know way more than I do about analog, but you sometimes come off as rather patronizing, which is unnecessary. Especially regarding equipment you don't own or have no familiarity with.

I will always value your opinion, but perhaps you can consider that not everyone has the gift (or the curse) you and Paul have when responding to honest, even if naive, questions. Many of us just want to set our system up an listen to music, not tweak it for every record.