My battle with sibilance.


At the minimum sibilance is annoying to me. Its only present on a small percentage of my records. However today I wanted to see if I could improve it. The song in question is Men at Work's "Down Under". The cartridge is an Ortofon Cadenza Bronze retipped by Soundsmith. I went through a lot of the protocols for abating annoying sibilance.
1.My anti skate was not optimally set so I thought and I adjusted to less using a dead spot on a test record. I know some people don't agree with this. I tried Soundsmiths method but until I see a video I won't understand it.
2. I adjusted my VTA to at least 20 degrees. I realized it was off. It was set at 12-15 degrees. I know the Shibata stylus is sensitive to VTA.
3. I checked the VTF and it was set at the manufacturers suggestion at 2.5 grams. Which is dead in the middle of 2.3 to 2.7. I adjusted to 2.62. A lot of people think the higher range is optimum.
3. I made sure my stylus was absolutely clean.
Guess what? After all this, the sibilance was less but still there. As a check I listened to the song in streaming and it was in the recording!!! However not as bad as my record before my TT adjustments. So I'm happy now my TT might sound better on other recordings. Anyway I hope my fellow members here have had some success on sibilance and maybe some will benefit from what I did.

128x128blueranger
You did the right things.  Recordings are what they are.  Good quality digital helps establish a reference standard to help identify issues with tricky items like proper turntable setup 
Erik, my room is 13x10x8. I have acoustically treated it pretty well. The speakers are on the long side. Thanks for everyone's input. I really do appreciate it. I'm resting a little easier in that I hear otber members battling sibilance too.
There is a lot of siblance on a lot of recordings for sure but on the men at work album particularly especially the opening verse of who can it be now and you hear it more on the vinyl than streaming because a good vinyl setup does not hide the flaws in the recording at all.