Is extremely accurate "VTA" adjustment necessary?

I think those who've heard "the magic of right VTA", which obviously includes me, must concede that achieving it regularly requires a degree of effort and/or record-keeping that some just find too bothersome.

We don't mind doing it. Our ears seem to demand it, so we chose our tonearm with easy, accurate, repeatable and on-the-fly height adjustment. That was priority #1. No arm without that feature even made the shopping list, which of course kept the list both short and costly!

Yellow stickies with best arm heights are on each LP, so every play after the first is literally a two second adjustment. I dial in arm height while my Teres platter is spinning up to speed, so it takes no useful time at all.

Last night we spun the Classic 45rpm reissue of the Dorati/Firebird for the first time in many months. I wasn't recording arm heights when last we played it, so I guessed a setting typical for other 200g/45rpm Classic reissues. Gotta start somewhere.

The first half of side 1 was ghastly. Shrill to the point of pain. We'd never played this record with the TriPlanar/ZYX, but it never sounded this bad with the OL Silver/Shelter. WTF?

Throwing preconceived notions aside I started dialing the arm down, 1/4 turn at a time (that's a huge adjustment BTW). I finally got things tamed a full revolution (0.7mm) lower than normal for this type of record. Once my ears recovered from cowering behind the sofa I was able to dial it in to the usual sweet spot. Clearly Mr. Grundman & Co. were confused when they cut that lacquer. It's a fabulous record but the cutting head was set far lower than normal.

Since the only thing I've added to this thread is a little Romy, I mean Raul, bashing, I thought I'd throw out what is happening on my TT tonight.

I've been playing mostly heavier albums lately, but tonight I wanted to listen to some older stuff, like Yes & Genesis, because the old lady is out doing girl crap, and volume is good!

A litlle background. When I installed the VTAF, I made a new arm board to accomodate it, not wanting to cut up my nice lead-loaded solid macassar ebony board. I made one out of 1" thick cocobolo with a red coconut palm riser. This is where it gets interesting.



On the heavier albums, it sounds great. But, tonight, I've been noticing that the thin older (30 years) albums don't seem right. So, as I tried to lower the VTA while an album was playing, I said: "Oh shit, it won't go any lower." I was wondering where all of the bass I've gotten used to disappeared to, and now I know.

I've been waiting to go over every adjustment on the TT until I get my Soro back from the shop (supposed to be last week, starting to get pissed). I have Wally's Analog Tool and everything else I need, but I don't think it can wait any longer. I can't stand it now!

So, it looks like I'll whip out another riser in the shop this week, change it all out, then go to town. I guess for the next couple of days I can only listen to the 180/200 g albums. Good thing I bought a bunch of them before I even finished building the table.

I'll update as I can.

Okay! I seemed to have lost this argument. It just seems to me that your record could care less what angle the record was cut at. I'm sure you all have seen pictures of a stylus contact point. Maximize it and you'll get the most out of your cartridge. It just happens that vta was the last and most difficult alignment that has to be done. The fact that it constantly changes only adds to the myth. I owned the martin logan cls, one of the most ruthlessly revealing speakers ever made. I can say that vta was just one of the many things that affect sound. You can't ignore it but you don't need to worship its alter.

Gregadd, I think the last 6 sentences of your post make a very fair statement of reality for VTA, particularly:

You can't ignore it but you don't need to worship its altar.

Best regards,

Well, I think I am certainly convinced now that my next table/arm combo will have the appropriate facilities for adjusting vta. After all this discussion I really need to try it for myself. There's nothing better than experiments, theory is not always a good substitute. I am note sure though whether I will get really obsessive about it, since I usually prefer to just listen without tweaking.

Doug, you really brought up another good argument earlier, although I think it is a very good one FOR vta adjustments if done properly. I also think that there is a chance that the cartridge alignment is off due to the slightly changed geometry when adjusting vta. However, for minute adjustment in VTA with a well-executed tonearm mount and vta adjuster, this should not change the geometry more than putting on a record of different thickness. This also would mean that we should certainly adjust for different record thickness to be true to the changed geometry.

Also this makes me really doubt the cheaper vta devices for Rega arms like expressimo and incognito. When you loosen the arm, change vta and then retighten, everything could have changed: The tonearm could slightly shift around in the mount changing cartridge alignment completely, you might hit an unstable thread on the mount, etc. Not the best method to get reproducible results. The bottom line is: If you want to bother about vta, you better do it right with a well-executed mechanism.

I really have to thank everybody here again. I thought the discussion was really helpful and really brought out some of the usually hidden issues in adjusting vta. And I do have to agree:

You can't ignore it but you don't need to worship its altar.

Again best wishes,

Rene