Right. All these alignment theories are great for mathematicians because in their imaginary world of intellectual perfections these things matter. Not only do they matter, they are everything, a fact they love nothing more than proving to you with math and logic all day long. Meanwhile back in the real world where we just want records to sound good playing music the reality is it just don't hardly even matter.
Mint LP provides Stevenson Alignment
First, I happen to own and like a Mint LP protractor, but over the course of time it has become obvious to me that no one up to now has pointed out that it is providing the Stevenson alignment. I have even read several self appointed experts here argue vehemently that either Lofgren or Baerwald alignments are far superior to Stevenson, but then go on to equally strongly advocate the use of the Mint LP. If ever there were an argument that alignment is somewhat over emphasized in our hobby, this is perhaps a good example of the truth of that thought. Recently I bought a Feickert protractor, which is very easy to use and have tried all the alignments using it. I can hear differences, but not always, certainly not on every track of every record, and honestly they are all good. So don't get you pants in a bunch over this trivial issue.
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Don't be afraid to use Stevenson, 99% of the Japanese tonearms designed to use Stevenson alignment. In my opinion the best protractor is the one with at least 3 different methods, so we can choose what we like and we can always realign to another one. Dr.Feickert has all 3 methods on one protractor. This is one of the reason i think this is the best protractor to experiment with different alignments, different tonearms. Precision Pivot to Spindle ruler is a must have for any protractor. Personally i can't detect any disadvantages using Stevenson compard to Baerwald or Lofrgen. Actually i use different alignments for different tonearms. |
I run a London/Decca with a paratrace stylus. Fussy enough you might imagine. However, I set it by eye and have never used a protractor or loupe because it sounds fine. I don’t mean fine as in acceptable, I mean fine as in soaring female vocals, shimmering cymbals, pan pipes, Rachmaninoff piano. All sounds great. So would using an alignment device bring a wakeup call improvement? Have I been betraying my rig by not using these tools? |
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