Clearaudio universal tonearm re-wire.
ClearAudio uses the thinnest tonearm wire imaginable. I have had to situations were I have broken the very delicate wires. I would like to replace the wire with something more secure but don’t want mess it up. Has anybody re-wired a Clearaudio tonearm before? It took almost a year to get it back from Clearaudio last time to have it fixed. I don’t want to deal with this anymore and I’m willing to sacrifice a little sonically for this headache to go away.
In my experience anything to do with the Tonearm Signal Path has a obvious fragility. I have a Silver Litz Wire used as a continuous wire on a Tonearm. I have lost a channel on this on a few occasions. I passed the Tonearm on to an individual who lives and breaths working with micro volts, a Tonearm is one of their destress jobs, Horses for Courses, is how I was taught.
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Then I would highly recommend rewiring the arm and no I do not have any idea how tough that is with a Universal. My own feeling about those types of things is if they put it together I can take it apart and yes that attitude has gotten me into trouble once in a while, but it does make life more interesting. I believe Cardas sells tonearm leads. The trick is the solder all the wires together with a pull wire. You pull the wire through the arm then solder the new wires to it and pull it back through. I do not know what is at the bottom of the arm, maybe a DIN connector? Whatever, you solder the new wire where the old ones were attached. |
@mijostyn There is no compelling reason to rewire my tonearms while they are presently intact. That’s just a waste of money and time. They are fine for now. If the leads break I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it, in which case I’ll probably just have my dealer take care of getting it to Clearaudio for official rewire. The good news for me is I have two Universal arms, one with a stereo cartridge and one with a mono. If I am without one of the arms for a while then I can do without using my mono cartridge while I wait for return of a repaired arm, if and when that happens. |
@mijostyn I know you like to tinker and figure out how to take things apart and fix them. I think that’s awesome, but I'm really not much of a DIY person myself, although I know my way around my bicycles well enough. I really have no desire to try and pull wires through the tonearm myself, or even solder cartridge leads. I’ll leave that to the pros. On the Universal, there is no DIN connector on the arm anywhere. It is truly a direct wire from the head shell leads all the way to the RCA connectors at the phono-stage. There are no connectors along the way. I can understand why Clearaudio does it that way. It likely has sonic advantages. If for no other reason it may keep the tonearm cable capacitance as low as possible (~240pF they tell me), which has an advantage for setting lower cartridge loading for better performance. |
LITZ WIRE FUN Tonearm Arrives, I had no idea what Litz Wire was. silk covered litz, 37 tiny strands each. tag each wire with colored tape Strip Silk Covering, pet the silk in vertical movements, Silver Solder to Junction Box
Tonearm Installed! Aren’t I a Brave Warrior! Later, a Cartridge Clip breaks, Prep to Repair Used Instant Vinyl for Insulation of reattached clip
Later, Insulation Wears Off at bottom pivot, VAS Rewires, converts to VPI mini-din Luckily I had a 3 Year Square Trade Warranty, they reimbursed me in full. ...................................................... Because of me, Maker has revised the design, ready for din connector http://newartvinyl.ru/board/detali_proigryvatelja/tonarm_black_bird12_5_5pin/7-1-0-53 a few more details https://www.audiogon.com/systems/11186
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