Help re: inner groove sibilance on Nott. Spacedeck

I had inner groove distortion with my Denon 103R on my Well Tempered. Even with checked and rechecked alignment, the distortion remained. It turned out the mounting just had too much play in it - apparently a common problem with the mounting scheme on the old WT arms. I changed the cartridge mount so that I could get higher torque on the mounting screws, and all inner groove problems went away, plus I gained much better focus and tighter bass. I'm guessing that low compliance cartidges such as the 103R are particularly sensitive to sturdy mounting. My Shure V15 in the original dodgy mounting had no trouble at all.

David

Armstrod -

By mounting do you just mean the screws holding the cartridge in place? Are you simply recommending tightening those screws?

Thanks,
Todd

I can think of two things to check on your spacearm.I have an Innerspace with similar arm and the nature of the Nottingham pivot shaft,bearing and wiring make it imperative that all the elements are working together.The wiring comes down through the armtube and down next to the slender armtube shaft,through a hole in back of the shaft into the base.If the arm hasn't been carefully handled the wiring can easily bind up inside at the pivot bearing causing every adjustment made to be way off as the arm moves accross a record .The arm should move freely.Also there's a set screw on top of the armtube that is used to adjust the clearence and amount of 'play' at the pivot bearing.With the armtube level and at rest ease the screw in untill it just stops,then back it off about an 1/8 turn.This should give the proper clearence.

Goatwuss,

The way the Well Tempered arm was set up, I had to completely change the way the cartridge mounted. Originally, the cartridge mounted to an aluminum crossmember, which in turn mounted with one screw to a slot on the end of the armwand. The threaded hole in the crossmember was stripped out to where there was play between it and the armwand. I changed it to where one of the cartridge mounting screws goes directly through the slot in the armwand, so that with proper torque the mounting is now very rigid.

So the answer is, maybe you need to do more than just tighten the cartridge mounting screws. If your arm has a conventional headshell, and the headshell doesn't fit tightly into the armwand, you may end up with the same problem I did no matter how tight your cartridge screws are. Seems to me everything from the cartridge all the way back to the bearings needs to be pretty rigid, whether you have gimbals, a unipivot, or strings like my Well Tempered.

Goatwuss,

I see you're selling your entire rig. Are you throwing in the towel on the inner groove distortion problem?

David