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help with clearance between sme 3009 arm's tube and arms lifter assembly

Hello guys,
I’m writing to ask for your support to correctly couple a Thorens TD160B mk 2 with a a SME 3009 improved seried 2 removable headshell arm. The cartridge I use is a Benz ACE L.

I bought the arm’s base and mounted the arm, verified its null points with the protractor, regulated the pickup orientation and put the cartridge shell parallel to the LP surface with an LP on the mat.

So far so good.

The point with me is that the clearance between the arm lifter assembly and the arm tube: it is too short. When putting the cartridge on the LP the arm tube touches the arm lifter (the semi-arc on top of the lifter case) and so it the stylus does not touch the LP at all.

I know (or at least I think I know) all about the exagonal 1/16’’ screw to be unscrewed to rise/lower the arm’s pillar and the other to untighten and rotate the arm lifter ring. So, I screwed the hex screw to rotate the arm lifter ring to the lowest point of the thread which below the arm’s yoke, on top of the arm’s pillar, but the clearance between the arm’s tube and the lifter is still too small to any avoid contact between these two parts.

With that said, now I run out of ideas.

Images at: 
https://imgur.com/zNxfC1p
https://imgur.com/qx0x6TG
https://imgur.com/GVeJjj4
https://imgur.com/KcAhhLG

Please, is there anybody out there ( ) who already run into this problem and who is so kind to help me ?

An additional info: in order to correctly set the arm pillar height (it affect the VTA...) I put a small inclinometer on the top of the cartridge shell and adjusted the height of the pillar until the cartridge shell was parallel to the disc surface. Is it correct ? I think so, but prefer to ask.

Many thanks
Luca
lsfarzo
geof3
1,129 posts
 
Raise the arm a few millimeters. Might be your only solution. A level arm is a good start point, but not set in stone. I run mine just below level...
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
Right. Raise the arm. Shim it up at the base, or however height is adjusted on that arm. The guys that design these things, they don't know where the arm will be used but they do know the angle the arm should be at wherever it is used. So it is unlikely they designed a lift that cannot achieve that angle. More likely you have it a bit low. They made a poor choice putting the lift so close to the arm pivot, it has the advantage of a lot of lift for little lifter range of motion but it also leverages tiny movement at the lifter into huge movement at the stylus. 

Anyway, if you raise the arm it will raise VTA and you will hear a little more clean articulate sound. If it was fat before and now higher is better then great. But if it was fine before and raising it becomes too lean and tipped up sounding then you can always fix that by adding a little fO.q tape as a shim between the cart and head shell. Added at the back end will tip the back end down slightly, producing the effect of a lower VTA without having to lower the arm.

It will also improve sound quality with greater presence and detail, making it well worth the money, but that is another story for another day.
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