Tone Arm Mass


Hello world. So here's my issue. (Well, one of them.) I have a Well Tempered Classic table with the carbon fiber arm, and a shelter 901 cartridge. I spent much time setting the table up, and was not satisfied. Lowing VTA, raising VTA… aligning and realigning … The lower mids and bass just were just weak.

Then I read about a thing called "compliance."

The Shelter is low compliance, which means that it should have a more massive arm – at least more massive than the WT. I bought a 3gm headshell weight, and low and behold, more bass, more life – I finally felt I was hearing what the 901 was capable of.

Thing is, I think if the arm had still more mass, it would improve the sound. Specifically, make the lower octaves more pronounced. More bass. What say you all?

How would I go about adding mass to my existing tone arm (buying a new one, or new table is unfortunately out of the question at this point.)

The rest of my system:

CAT SL Mark III preamp (100 ohm load on the 901.)
Quicksilver v4s
Vandy 2CE Sig
PS 300
Richard Gray 1200

Thanks for your time!
rada
Rada,

You've already done the first thing, which is add weight at the headshell. Second would be to either add damping fluid, or lower the paddle deeper into the fluid, or both. That doesn't do the same thing as raising effective mass, but it simulates it. Third would be a tonearm wrap; do a search and you'll find plenty of info on both commercial products and DIY solutions like teflon plumbers tape.

With that said, I did all those things to my Well Tempered Record Player arm to try to make it sound right with my Denon 103R, and it was all for naught; it just wasn't a good match. It was much better in a heavier, fixed bearing arm.

Your Shelter has a slightly higher compliance than the Denon, so your results may be different, although there's always a dispute about the actual compliance of the Denon.

David