Discuss The Viv Lab Rigid Arm

@intactaudio , Dave, JR is a pen pal. There is a new design for the stage of the WallyScope. I am in part responsible for the design change. I have the exact same microscope JR uses except it is on a laboratory grade stage which makes it easier to adjust. To look at zenith you need to put reference marks on the cartridge or whatever the cartridge is sitting on then you snap lines across the reference marks then on the long axis of the stylus. The program then automatically calculates the angle. In all my cartridges that is Zero degrees +- a few minutes. 

I am not your usual casual audiophile. I was in the business for a decade and I am a technocrat and tool collector. If it can be done I can usually do it, in analog fashion anyway. I do not have any CNC equipment because I do not make production runs. All my furnisher are one offs. I have way more capability than JR ever dreamed of.  I will put a picture of the SteinScope on my system page so you can see if you can figure out how I made it. 

@clearthinker , Thanx for doing the calculation. I'm lazy. IMHO VTA towers are a complete waste of money. A scale on the tonearm's barrel is a very useful touch. It is always nice to have repeatable measurements. The real riot is that people will say up is brighter down is duller (I may have that reversed). As the stylus tilts off the axis of the cutter head in either direction the contact line can no longer fit into the smallest modulations, this high frequency ones. Moving the tonearm up or down creates a mechanical low pass filter. You loose the high frequencies in either direction. This is a great example of people letting their brains fool them. 

@rauliruegas , All I can say is that people are entitled to like what they want but then they are not true audiophiles. A true audiophile knows that technology advances and there is always better, more accurate sound around the corner. You have to wade through all the BS to get there, but that is life with humans. A true audiophile is never entirely happy with their system. The view this hobby as an evolutionary process. In our day audiophiles built their own equipment. Wait till you see the subwoofers I come up with!

News Flash, The Atlas Lambda SL has landed somewhere in the US. I will have it in a few days. It's New Cartridge Time! Break out the Champaign and the SmarTractor. 

@mijostyn 

You are quite correct that many people including a lot here allow their brains to fool them about what they are hearing.  That is of course because their brains are far more complex than mere hearing machines and do not accurately report the sound they are listening to.

This is why I took the handle CLEARTHINKER in part in the hope of explaining this to those people.

I think I am pleased not quite to be a true audiophile within your definition.  I changed my pre-amp and phono amp in 2020 and I sometimes buy a new cartridge (usually high-end Ortofon if something interesting is announced - must be flea-weight mass for the ultra lightweight Aeroarm).  But my system is pretty much in a steady state now and I love it the way it is.  Anyway, Clearthinker points out that technological changes are not always sound quality advances.

Referring to yourself in the third person is a bad sign. Why didn’t you just announce your superiority from the get-go? Would have curtailed the needless debates. This site might then have been renamed “Clearthinker Forum”. 

Dear @intactaudio  : I think that I did not explain very well on that " bs " about zenith and it's not that be not important the real issue is that no kind of alignment or underhung/overhung tonearm design are the culprit about but the cartridge manufacturer.

We have no single control of what a cartridge manufacturer does and if you buy a cartridge with a way off zenith then return to the manufacturer.

We can't try to " solve " all errors down there, it's if like if you found out a mistake in the LP recording: you can't fix it. The recprding proccess is out of your control same with any audio tem where something is " wrong " and if really is wrong responsability to fix it/support you is the manufacturer.

I can't fix all errors in cartridge/tonearm alignments because even I made time to time " errors/mistakes " about. What I try is to understand what is happening down there at the stylus tip and after that take care for the cartridge/tonearm alignment be as accurated as I can accurated as permit my knowledge levels and alignment tools and that's all.

So, zenith is not my responsability and if I really can't fix why to be anal about:

""" Incorrect Zenith Angle on Cartridges, or incorrect coil angle at the end of the cantilever.

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Zenith angle refers to the angle in which the diamond is glued onto the cantilever.  Sometimes it is not perfectly straight, it actually happens quite frequently.  Or the coil at the end of the cartridge may not be mounted perpendicular to the stylus.

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If there is an inherent imbalance with the cartridge or zenith angle errors  it is a cartridge problem.  ""

Löfgren, Baerwald, Stevenson and the like are away from that issue no matters what.

If you or other gentleman already have an algoritm to fix it then we need all to know it.

Again, yes is important that zenith.

R.