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New cartridge, now some adjustment questions.

I recently purchased a Shure v15mxr cartridge on closeout and mated it to my music hall mmf-2.1 table. There has certainly been an enormous improvement in sound quality. Just this week my back-ordered Hi-Fi News test record came in, and after running its tests, I can hear that my cartridge is not tracking all the test tracks perfectly. So I have a few questions.

1) It has some difficulty tracking the 300hz test tone tracks on side 2. On all three tracks there is at least slight distortion at some point in the track. I tried re-aligning my cartridge, but got no signifigant change. What factor is typically at fault here? Is it cartridge adjustment, or some other factor?

2) On the bias setting (anti-skate) tracks, it tracks the first two perfectly, but starts to break up slightly on 3, and terribly on 4. My table has limited anti-skate adjustment, (weight on a string). I made it better with some adjustment, but given that these are also 300hz test tones (as the tests above), I assume the two are related.

This seems to be a very helpful record, except they don't give many suggestions as to fixing the problems you find! Suggestions would be much appreciated!
jed
dougdeacon
3,338 posts
 
Try increasing VTF a bit, maybe up to 1.1 or 1.2g. Then fiddle with antiskate again.

Here are some other possibilities:

a) the suspension in this new cartridge is still too stiff to track certain passages,

b) you've discovered this particular cartridge's performance limits,

c) resonance in the platter or plinth at the problem frequency,

d) cartridge misalignment (seems unlikely from the symptom you described, but who knows?)
Post removed 
dougdeacon
3,338 posts
 
Marty,
Great suggestion to use headphones to test for acoustic feedback.

Jed,
If you don't have a way to listen via headphones with the speakers off, try playing the suspect passages with volume set fairly low. Listen to the L speaker with your ear very close to the speaker. If the distortion only occurs at higher room volumes then acoustic feedback is likely the culprit.
jed OP
10 posts
 
Thanks for all the responses. It's definitely not acoustic feedback - I should have mentioned that all of my listening is through headphones. I increased tracking force 1/10 gram at a time last night, and listened to music. At 1.5 grams, the breakup is gone. At that tracking force it also tracks the test tracks nearly perfectly, especially as I spent some more time adjusting anti-skate. So, is there any problem running at 1.5 grams? (although I'm not sure I want to know, as it definitely sounds best at that weight!)

Viridian- I'm using the turntable basics mirrored alignment gauge, and aligning the cartridge body square to the grid lines. To the best of my current ability, the stylus also looks square, but it's pretty hard to see. Is this what you meant?
larryi
4,017 posts
 
You need to also consider that the Shure scale is quite inaccurate and insensitive. I've compared my Shure scale readings to a calibrated digital scale and found mine to be off by .4 grams (read 1.1 when actual weight was 1.5) and another scale was off by .3 grams in the other direction.

Go with sonic results of experimentation, just don't go to extremely high downforce.
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