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Can you ever get perfect alignment?

People are always agonizing about getting perfect cartridge alignment, or at least close to perfect, which is a good thing. But is it really possible? Assuming the diamond is perfectly aligned on the cantilever, which is a big if, the only gauge I have seen that would give near-perfect alignment is the Mint, which enables you to sight the cantilever between two tiny parallel lines. I had to give up on this because it was just too difficult with a cartridge with a small cantilever. At least for me. So the Mint and it’s progeny aside, how can anyone expect to achieve this microscopic level of alignment with any other jig? With the Basis gauge, you line the tonearm up with the lines on the jig. Ok, but you’re telling me that a human being won’t be off by a few thousandths of an inch? Or the Geo-Disc. Point the arrow at the pivot point? Are you kidding? You could probably be off by 1/4" easily. Or the Dennision. Unless there is an indentation at the exact center of the pivot - how can you ever get enough precision to work at the distances we’re talking about? Personally, I did the best I could with the Basis gauge and my setup sounds very good to me. No mistracking or other nasties, so I’m good with it. I’ll tell you one thing - my next cartridge, if I live that long, will have a large, front-mounted cantilever.
chayro
roberjerman
4,319 posts
 
@avanti1960 Thank you, you have nailed it!
browndt
97 posts
 
Actually you have three dimensional space in which a cartridge is aligned.
You can get it about right with care but the record you are playing
changes the plane constantly because no record surface is perfectly flat. That is why I use a unipivot arm to compensate for this factor. The ability of the stylus to tract well is also a factor in both vertical and lateral imperfections. 



pops
2,275 posts
 
I can get darn close to makeing me happy, my ears are the final judge.
whart's avatar
whart
3,057 posts
 
I use the Kuzma Airline (linear tracker). I don’t know that any third party protractors or other alignment tools (apart, perhaps from azimuth) would be useful- the arm comes with a simple gloss cardboard ’card’ with appropriate markings. I use a magnifying glass to get the points on the alignment card to the center of the stylus, as much as I am able to see that with modest magnification. There are two marks, like "null points" but given the straight line tracking, these don’t describe part of an arc, as with conventional pivoted arms.
The greatest difficulty is moving the very heavy arm pod (Kuzma XL) to get the arm into position. It can be time consuming, and even though the simple cardboard jig doesn’t seem particularly sophisticated, there is a big difference in result between "close enough" and "spot on" (or at least as "spot on" as I can make it, in light of the equipment involved).
The additional trick with this arm is that it is supposed to be level, but at a slightest cant inward toward the spindle-- "too level" may result in the stylus hanging up on a groove.
Although I used to view this process with trepidation, I have owned the arm a long time and am now pretty good at setting it up.
Adding a Minus K anti-vibration platform beneath the table/arm assembly required additional jiggering-- since the table has no real center of mass to balance the load, and requires a balance between the center of the table and heavy arm pod for the Minus K top platform to be level. (I use an HRS platform between the Minus K top and the turntable-- so it is a lot of physical work to get the table in place just to start the set up process).
nandric's avatar
nandric
4,086 posts
 

The answer is included by the following dispute between two

sceptics:

1. Sceptic A: ''One thing is for sure, my friend, nothing is for

    sure''.

2. Sceptic B: ''Are you sure about that?''

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