The damper, the tension wire and cantilever position

@nandric Certainly no need scour through Archive Threads for my contributions.

I have and do communicate outside of this forum with some very adept EE/Engineers and Technicians who are a forte of knowledge on these subjects.

There is enough information gathered to suggest a Cart' at the time of production will have +/- tolerances allowed for as the assembly is finalised.

There is also plenty to suggest once the Cart's is in use in a particular environment and subjected to the practices of a variety of users, the variances that can develop to the assembly of parts can be very very broad.

Have a look at some of the Images supplied of Cart's that have been supplied to receive a refurb, and in many cases it can be seen the environment and attitude to the Cart' from the user, has resulted in a very undesirable condition being witnessed.

In a nut shell, New Cart's mechanical interfaces, can have mechanical interfaces that are quite unlike a New Cart's in a very short space of time.

I am an advocate of a Annual Service/Refurbish if optimum performance is the desired state for the Cart' whilst it's parts are still quite fit to perform their selected riles.   

Dear Nandric, are we to understand your cantilevers become ’deviant’ while stored as a result of being neglected? Sure enough these little devils can seem to have a mind of their own, but this does ’stretch’ the imagination a teeny bit.

I’m only a reasonably well informed amateur and no expert like Dover, but my own ’experience’ (which definitely includes errors) seems to suggest that deviant cantilevers can be the result of two things: incorrect alignment of the cartridge forcing a straight cantilever in a skewed position or excessive anti skating pulling the arm outside and dislocating the cantilever. In both cases they need to be used.

I’m a bit of a cheapskate so I tend to buy previously owned cartridges, mainly directly from Japan. Sometimes they come with deviant cantilevers, in which case I have them checked by Kilian Bakker of holistic audio. If the deviation is minor this can usually be set straight as most cartridges have some manouvering space of the motor assembly to allow some minor realignment. But in some cases, like the Mutech and Transfiguration carts, the construction is very different and in these cases the tension wire has been bent out of shape. The only solution then is to have it ’factory’ rebuilt, if such still exists. The cheap and ’amateurish’ way to sort of correct this is to adjust the placement of the cart in the headshell to a position in which the cantilever ’looks’ straight on your alignment tool. This may look a bit weird, but it works without any obvious sonic penalty. Obviously this presupposes that the stylus is positioned correctly on the cantilever, which experts agree is not always the case. So I wouldn’t loose too much sleep over this.

edgewear, Thanks to be so kind not to take my ascription to fysical

things their own will. I am certainly not Kantian. But I need to correct

your  assumtion about my ''negletcion'' of my ''collection'' of  + 60 carts..

I stated this for them . Those wich are never or only occasionaly

used have the right to feel neglected. What  other possibility for

revenge could they have? All other things are not movable.

I wish you were my neighbour so I could be put you in front

of my Kiseki Agaat ( ''the beauty''')  before connecttion with

the grooves and in the grooves during the act of playing.

You would  than trust your own experience as usual . I will 

however not propose such ''expiment '' to Raul...

because I know his answer in advance :'' it is all about

distortions''. 

Haha, I have over 30 of them, so I’ll be on the watch for their revenge. Thanks for the warning! I owned the Agate and still own a Lapis Lazuli (albeit refurbished by vdHul with boron cantilever). Both Kiseki carts have fairly long cantilevers and a relatively high compliance in relation to their body mass, so I would assume the record grooves will be able to force their cantilevers into a ’straight’ position without too much stress on the moving parts assembly. This would probably be more difficult with cartridges that have a much lower compliance. Do you experience the same behaviour with those as well?

@edgewear It was a sad day when Kilian Bakker informed his UK Customers he was not to offer his services direct with this Country.

I do have work associates who live in Holland and Eastern France nr Belgium, so a opportunity to create something may be able to be organised in the future.

It was Kilian who was the first to inform me about airborne Metal Particulate contaminating coils, and even shorting them, when the impact is catastrophic, it can pretty much become a channel loss. This is not an issue with a particular Cart’, it has potential to commence occurring from the day a New Cart’ is put to use.

At present I am very infrequent with using my preferred Cart’, (rebuilt by Kilian), when put to use, it is approx’ one Albums Side before the Damper seems to develop a elasticity that performs with an attraction, and a good hour of use before the presentation is seemingly back to its earlier self.