So far, many thanks to all of you for your time and effort in answering to my question. Which is acutally a question from a friend living 200 miles south. I have some knowledge regarding this topic (and 4 different tt's in operation) but I know you might have even more (knowledge). So, I am glad you are supporting me.
Special thanks to
@vonhelmholtz Since you are happy with what you have, why not ask if incorrectly setup tonearm/cartridge will damage a record?
@mulveling (....) if is sounds really good, it probably isn’t too far off the mark on anything. Maaaybe VTF and anti-skate can get into "you shouldn’t do that" territory without being overtly audibly bad. But VTF is super easy to check & re-check, and anti-skate should be applied sparingly.
You might add some conditions, too:
- Does it remain good across the whole record surface, especially inner grooves?
- Does it retain clean playback at loud SPL (exposing feedback and rumble issues), assuming the owner chooses to enjoy those levels? Boy has that one bit me lately lol.
As to the main raison of my friend's question. It appears that the tracking force he has applied is around 1gr higher than recommended in the user guide of the Ortofon MM Black. However, he measured VTF with a digital scale. And this not a good idea as his tt is a Cleraudio with magnetic tone arm.
Despite the 2.9gr the digital scale is showing, he says the sound quality is 'super' to his ears. I assume that the 2.9gr is an incorrect reading. I will recommend to use a basic analog scale ("seesaw" model) and to compare this value with the other one given by the digital scale.
If VTF is really way too high, vonhelmholtz's comment comes into play
If the sound quality is 'super' to my friends ears, is it possible that the VTF is far away from being correctly set? --> coming back to my initial question.
Best regards, eagledriver