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Reducing scratch impact with VTA???

I encountered an odd phenomenon last night. I was re-setting up my cartridge (AT OC9) and decided to lower the VTF to make the cartridge as parallel to the record as possible. On clean vinyl this did have the effect of smoothing out the highs and reducing brightness etc. Good all the way around.

The unexpected thing is what seems to be a reduction in the impact of scratches on playing. I have an old DG Bluenote that has a lot of scratches that were really noticeable on my old cartridge that seemed to be lessened with the new setup. I was actually expecting the scratches to be more pronounced because the cartridge is more sensitive and this definitely turned out not to be the case.

Anyone else ever experience anything like this, or am I imagining it?
grimace
rushton's avatar
rushton
2,445 posts
 
Absolutely, you may well have moved your cartridge into a more optimal setting. Congratulations!
grimace OP
624 posts
 
So, I got a couple of new 180 & 200g vinyl records the other day and they just weren't sounding as good as I expected them too. To thin in the highs, 'rolled-off' I guess is the common term. Although I didn't feel there was any muddying of the bass. I decided to try a little more VTA adjustment, raising the tonearm a little to compensate for the heavier vinyl. I only had to raise it a hair, but it made a big difference. Cymbals sound livlier and strings sounded more, I guess complete. I guess I didn't have it as perfect as I thought the other day. Seems better now though.

In some ways VTA actually seems like a more influential adjustment than tracking force. It was really noticible in my system.
rushton's avatar
rushton
2,445 posts
 
Grimace, you are discovering the importance of VTA (or more accurately, stylus rake angle or "SRA") to good playback. Each different record thickness will have a different "best arm height" to keep the stylus rake angle constant relative to the groove. Sometimes this can vary even among same thickness records if a different cutting angle was used for the cutter head by the mastering engineer (there has not been a standard for this).

Keep in mind that tracking force and VTA/SRA are interrelated, but once you finetune your setup, the small VTA changes needed to adjust for different thickness records have virtually no additonal impact on the optimal tracking force so you can focus only on VTA adjustments from LP to LP. If you've not yet read the article by Lloyd Walker that I linked to in my first post, I think you'll find that informative.

Congratulations on your continuing explorations!
grimace OP
624 posts
 
well, its not really feasible to adjust VTA for indivudual records. There is no manual fine-tune for it. You have to open the allen screw and manually raise and lower the arm. I think its going to be one of those things thats just set up close enough for everything that I play.
rushton's avatar
rushton
2,445 posts
 
A friend shares the same challenge in owning an arm that doesn't allow for easy VTA adjustment. He copes by using an index card across which he's scribed a line for the optimal arm tube height for the various thickness LPs he plays. It's still a not quick and easy adjustment (set screw on the arm pillar), but he's gotten the process down to about 20 seconds and feels pretty comfortable doing it. Of course, this clearly falls into the category of "how much is the difference worth."

Regards,
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