@lewm : Yes, WallySkator is just for anti-skate. It enables an easy setting to a requisite percentage of VTF, which JR, or perhaps Wally before him, established to be 11% for 9-inch arms, 9% for 12-inch. It does some other things, too, like measure stiction, but AS is its main use.
Feel Silly Asking This Question Alignment Parameters
I feel silly asking this question, but here it goes. Most of the arms I have owned over the years have came with proprietary protractors, and certain ones like the SME are really just overhang gauges. For other ones I have bought custom generated arc protractors for the specific arm. I will probably do so again with this Origin Live arm. However in the mean time i decided to set up using their provided protractor.
When I went to install a cartridge on the table, I found I was not wild about using their protractor, so I decided to generate a Conrad H arc protractor till I made an order for an Accutrak one. What I found odd is that Lofgren A had the longest overhang at 16.8 mm and Lofgren B at 16.3mm. The Origin Live shows 17.5 mm. Is the Rega type alignment that much different than Lofgren or Stevenson? I also noticed with the OL alignment that cartridge offset in the headshell was noticeably greater.
What is also noticeable is the sonics of each alignment is different. To be honest, I like the overall sound of the OL alignment, but I also have this nagging feeling that it does not track as well.
I always felt at this stage of my audio journey I knew how to align a cartridge. I have been doing it since I was in my 20's! Now I have a large degree of uncertainty of which alignment to choose, and what the implications are if i choose wrong. This arm is a long term keeper for me, so its a matter of wanting to get this set up optimized.
Any insights you might pass along is greatly appreciated. Do have a good chuckle at my expense as it seems that I get into these moments of self doubt, and trying to find the way out of the forest of audio can be quite comical.
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At best, any AS setting can be correct (exactly equal in magnitude to the skating force) at only two points on the LP surface. There is a fairly broad range of settings that will satisfy that requirement, 11% of VTF being one of them. I’d be curious to borrow a Wally just to find out how close I get to 11% by simply setting AS to a minimal value above zero . |
@wrm57, @lewm The best way to see this is with a naked cantilever. The AS setting depends on the type of stylus used. For 9" arms the range is 9-11%. 9% for spherical, 10% for elliptical and 11% for line contact. I push it to 12% with really aggressive styluses like the Gyger S, Replicant 100 and the Soundsmith MR. When lowered in the middle of a 33.3 RPM record the cantilever should remain perfectly straight. It's horizontal angulation should not change. It it leans outwards towards the right channel you have too little AS. If it leans inwards towards the left channel you have too much AS. The WallySkater settings get you right there without a trial and error nuisance. It also verifies that the bearings and AS device are functioning correctly. I have seen several arms with significant defects. I have also put the stylus down all along the radius of a record and the cantilever's angle does not change notably. When set at the beginning of the record you will see that the cantilever starts leaning towards the right channel just before the run out area proving that the skating force INCREASES towards the end of the record. Setting in the middle gives you a good average. The WallySkator should be adjusted so that the stylus floats over the center of the record. The Lyras, Clearaudios and Van den Huls are great cartridges to see this. I use 20X loops and very bright lights to aid the process. Unfortunately, cartridges that extend over their cantilever make this difficult to see as will very low compliance cartridges. |
There’s a bit too much to address individually on this topic. The last thread that was loosely related to this this subject hit a few days after I put this blog post out. TL;DR #1: There numerous excellent geometries to choose from. Dispense with your confirmation bias about Löfgren A/B, Stevenson, Uni-DIN, etc. And faithfully follow your favorite. TL;DR #2: I strongly suspect the "controlled" experiments many have reported on this thread are heavily skewed by (1) not getting the zenith right and (2) varying it slightly with each setup - invalidating any comparison. Take a look at the distortion and tracking angle curves in the above post, when the zenith is off. I have not compared zenith errors across all alignments, but know this: zenith is the new azimuth, and it’s much trickier to get right than azimuth is. Aligning zenith using the cantilever is a much more flawed method than setting azimuth with a horizontal headshell and calling it "good". I say this with humility. As @lewm commented above, I would hope that we all look back at our work product from 5 years ago and view it with disdain ... as far as how much progress we’ve made in our journey. ... Thom @ Galibier |
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