Frogman -
I got considerably more transparency and even less grain when I removed the inner foam and stripped off the heatshrink from the aluminium arm tube with both low compliance ( Denon 103 Garrott ) and high compliance ( Shure V15VMR ) cartridges.
Also I suggested implementing electromagnetic dampening of lateral movement by using fridge magnets early in this post - disappointingly for me, only ct0517 has tried it - a $5 tweak that stabilises the cartridges so much, you get increased output and have to turn the volume down. The dampening increases proportionally with lateral arm movement speed.
By the way magnesium has a lower Youngs Modulus than aluminium, which means it is much softer and less rigid ceteris parabus.
If you want to go one step further, you can open up the cartridge end of the wand ( the aluminium is very thin ), pull out the soft teflon insert, and replace it with a piece of carbon fiber. You can use superglue and clamp it up with a decent vice. This gives you a much stiffer headshell.
I got considerably more transparency and even less grain when I removed the inner foam and stripped off the heatshrink from the aluminium arm tube with both low compliance ( Denon 103 Garrott ) and high compliance ( Shure V15VMR ) cartridges.
Also I suggested implementing electromagnetic dampening of lateral movement by using fridge magnets early in this post - disappointingly for me, only ct0517 has tried it - a $5 tweak that stabilises the cartridges so much, you get increased output and have to turn the volume down. The dampening increases proportionally with lateral arm movement speed.
By the way magnesium has a lower Youngs Modulus than aluminium, which means it is much softer and less rigid ceteris parabus.
If you want to go one step further, you can open up the cartridge end of the wand ( the aluminium is very thin ), pull out the soft teflon insert, and replace it with a piece of carbon fiber. You can use superglue and clamp it up with a decent vice. This gives you a much stiffer headshell.