Eminent Technology ET-2 Tonearm Owners

Hi Chris,
I checked with Bruce about the gap between the VTA mechanism and whatever. 
He said " The gap does not need to the same between the VTA shaft bearing blocks and the manifold housing. The four screws should not be torqued down to close the gap, the average should usually be about.02 to about .06 inches. If the VTA mechanism is working correctly, the torque on those four screws should adjust the stiffness of the motion of the VTA mechanism and not tightened to the point that it stops."  
Just thought everyone ought to know his opinion.
-John

Hi John

the diagram in this link came from Bruce. the setup in that pic is mine.
   
Diagram - We have two vertical plates/walls, a roller in between and four horizontal bolts holding it together. It makes sense that all four horizontal bolts should be at the same gap for even operation. I have talked to Bruce before about the .02 to .06 range and it is a personal choice. I prefer firm .02 as I do not use the VTA a lot with my cart / preamp.
  
As we know going .06 is the gap opening extreme value - also the least firm action. So action on the lever is loosest/smooth. If the VTA is working properly and someone wants to literally VTA on the fly - as the record plays - looser is easier.

The Lyra cartridges sound a bit bright and lack bass at 47K. I hear a real improvement in freq response with lower values. My ARC ph-5 has values of 47K 1K, 500, 200, and 100 ohms. I use 100.

Those load values are true of the latest ARC Ph9 as well. 47k, 1k, 500, 200, 100.

My SP11 MKII uses values of 47k, 100, 30, 10, 3

It's been my personal experience that the phono circuit design into single load values, needs to be ultra low noise in design, to be able to use single digit values. I assume ARC chose higher values on their newer phono stages/ preamps designs due to the customer / cart requirements that exist today.
  
Regarding how your Lyra cart reacts to 47k. Maybe this is cart specific I don't know, don't own a Lyra cart.   

fwiw 

I can use 47k on MC's with no loss in frequency and if it is a brighter recording, the SP11 has adjustable Gain - I can dial it down a bit. Takes out the brightness. Get it right and I can get the band sounding like they are at the Mic. On regular records 100 loading works fine, and produces a good Studio like sound. I don't have a remote but the SP11 is parked at the side of me within reach.

Cheers Chris

Hello all,
Had recent email exchange with Bruce.  Told him rumor was he was considering a run of long I beams and if he was to please put me down for one.  He said he was thinking about it.  Maybe a little encouragement from us would help?

Re cartridge loading, I'm not at all disappointed with what I'm hearing but John kind of talked me into trying the 100 Ohm loading.  Going to give it a shot to see what I hear.  Cheap and easy tweak.

I think within certain limits cartridge loading is listener and recording dependent.  I listen to a lot of small combo jazz.  I want to be able to hear cymbals that sound like brass (not steel) shimmer and extend off into forever.  But when you spin up a trumpet like Miles, you don't want it ear piercing.

An example of recording dependent:. I really like the great sax players. I think Paul Desmond was one of the greats and own many of his records.  I read a story about Desmond years ago that said he had an obsession about not being able to hear the spit in his reed.  He insisted the recording engineers roll off his feed.  As a consequence I often raise VTA when listening to Desmond.  Even though his great RCA recordings with Jim Hall were extremely well done, you almost never hear the air across the reed like you do on a Ben Webster recording.

And as I mentioned earlier I believe, from a listening perspective VTA and subwoofer tuning are interrelated.  If you raise VTA for top end extension, if necessary, you can inch up the sub to fill in bass a little.  Can't get carried away or bass will get tubby but just a little can help with foundation.

Again, however, I think once you get your system well set up a lot of this boils down to listener preference.  

Cheers,
Harry

It's too bad that audiophiles abandoned bass, midrange, and treble controls in the interest of fidelity to the source. It's also too bad that many master recordings can stand a bit of tweaking. I liked my old Marantz receiver just fine for this, but someone talked me out of it!
John

Interesting comments on the subject of mc cartridge loading; especially from Ralph Karsten of Atma-Sphere and references to Jonathan Carr's feelings on the topic.  

https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/mc-cartridge-loading

In the context of my systems over time my experience with cartridge loading has been that most of the mc's that I have owned sounded "best" at 47K.  While lower values could tame possible excessive brightness or add fullness to the upper bass/lower midrange, these "benefits" were often accompanied by a loss of overall detail and linearity and a sense that dynamics were being supressed.  I found that I could ultimately achieve more satisfying sound by addressing the issue of brightness or lean bass (at 47K) elsewhere in my system or by changes in VTA and slightly higher VTF.  In fairness, my systems have tended to be fuller sounding than most, and I can understand how in the context of a leaner sounding system one might take the other approach.  

Harry, Paul Desmond had one of the most beautiful alto sounds ever; as you point out he was one of the greats.  His obsession with not wanting to hear the spit on his reed led him to say what is one of my favorite quotes in jazz.  When asked how he got that beautiful pure tone he replied that he wanted "... to sound like a dry martini".  I think that what he was asking for from the engineers was that they not let close micing alter his natural tone which did not normally have the sound of air and spit in it. Close micing will exaggerate any air or spit in the tone, so "rolling off his feed" would compensate for that exaggeration.  Ben Webster, on the other hand, used what is referred to as "subtone".  He didn't want the purity of tone that Desmond had and cultivated that breathy-with-spit tone.  Both great players.  Regards.