High Compliance Cartridge With Low/Med Mass Tone Arm


I am using an Art 9xi with a SL 1200G turntable.
Dyn Compliance on the cartridge is 25 after converting from 
the Japanese standard. Tonearm mass with stock headshell is 12 grams.
The stock headshell is the lightest I can find.

Using the Vinyl Engine Cartridge Resonance Evaluator, the 
resonant frequency comes in at the middle of the 7Hz yellow area.

I know this is not Ideal.
Question: what should I be listening for to determine if this is not 
a good match? What negative sound characteristics would be
apparent? 

Thanks for any input.  

 

 

 

ericsch

7Hz is very close to the generally accepted range, 8 to 12Hz. Given the fact that you really don’t know the exact effective mass or the exact compliance of your particular samples, odds are that you are either slightly below the accepted  range or slightly within the excepted range. I would absolutely pay no attention to this issue. Just listen to music. You’re almost certain to be fine.

Lewm, I was hoping you'd respond. The tonearm mass is verified at 12 gr. For the cartridge I used the 1.7 multiplier to convert from Japanese spec.

ericsch

Question: what should I be listening for to determine if this is not 
a good match?

You can listen for LF distortion and observe the woofer cones for extraneous movement.

That calculator can be incorrect because there is a lot of variance involved. It is always best to measure the resonance frequency directly with a test record. As @lewm suggests 7 Hz is not all that bad. It is better to be lower than higher. If your cartridge is tracking well and tolerates warps OK then you are fine and I would not worry about it. As the resonance frequency gets too low warps can send the tonearm airborne.