Tonearm/Cartridge pairing.


Hello to everybody.

My turntable’s tonearm has a mass of 15.6 g (cane + head shell). My cartridge weighs 6.9 g. If I calculate the effective mass of the tonearm the way the maker did (arm’s mass with head shell + cart + tracking force) I get a global 24.5 g mass. The arm + shell mass is 15.5 (15.6 actually); the head shell weighs 10.1g.

My cartridge’s static compliance is rated 20mm/N (I ignore whether it’s @10Hz or 100Hz).

Will someone more experienced than I am please tell me if the cart and the tonearm are suited to each other statically? My cart (Goldring E3) did fine on a friend’s turntable (rega P2) but seems a little ill at ease on mine (Technics SL-1510, ca. 1978).

Opinions welcome,

Thanks
M.

martinguitars

@lewm 
 

I am 69 and had my first 'serious' turntable in 1975. There surely is something I still have to learn, but it's not to become a vinyl nut, spending my days measuring, balancing, testing, weighing, comparing... spending.
 

Thanks for your remark, but your don't really know what I actually know I fear.
Regards

M

just check if the top of the headshell is parallel with the record surface.  

use a folded index card.  

To answer your question, looks like the combination it should be okay.  Even possibly the Technics tonearm a better match for the Goldring.

Second thought, cartridge setup.  Something is not adjusted right.  Overhang, azimuth, vertical tracking angle, vertical tracking force, anti-skate.  All those little finicky, twiddly adjustments that make turntable ownership fun.  Alignment and tracking force gauges both for $20 on Ebay.  Every turntable owner should have those.

Suggest watching youtube videos about setting up a turntable and cartridge.

If you don't want to fiddle with it, take it to a stereo shop or a friend who is that vinyl nut to look at it. 

Hi,

I don’t know what in my previous posts suggested that I have so little experience of tuning a cartridge. I apologize if I conveyed an impression of partial inability.. My original question was if arm and cartridge looked compatible from a static point of view.

I have used a digital scale, precise to 0.1 g; I have checked the overhang with a tool, and set the anti-skating a little lower as suggested by dover. I thought it was obvious that if I was mentioning compliance and tonearm mass I was a little beyond merely telling Side A from Side B of an LP record..

As for VTA, the SL-1510’s tonearm doesn’t apparently have a regulation for the arm’s height; I can rely on tiny spacers, but the difference from perfect parallel is, by eye, so minimal that I can’t believe it makes an audible difference.

Thanks for all the help,
M.

Please go to sound-smith.com/s. The link will show you how to properly set up your turntable. You can watch videos on YouTube from the same company. Setting the top of your cartridge is NOT necessarily a solution of any kind for vertical tracking angle. Sound Smith calls it stylus rake angle, SRA. The preferred angle is 92° not 90.
Peter will tell you EXACTLY how to set up your turntable. 
Bent