Reducing scratch impact with VTA???

Grimace, you are discovering the importance of VTA (or more accurately, stylus rake angle or "SRA") to good playback. Each different record thickness will have a different "best arm height" to keep the stylus rake angle constant relative to the groove. Sometimes this can vary even among same thickness records if a different cutting angle was used for the cutter head by the mastering engineer (there has not been a standard for this).

Keep in mind that tracking force and VTA/SRA are interrelated, but once you finetune your setup, the small VTA changes needed to adjust for different thickness records have virtually no additonal impact on the optimal tracking force so you can focus only on VTA adjustments from LP to LP. If you've not yet read the article by Lloyd Walker that I linked to in my first post, I think you'll find that informative.

Congratulations on your continuing explorations!

well, its not really feasible to adjust VTA for indivudual records. There is no manual fine-tune for it. You have to open the allen screw and manually raise and lower the arm. I think its going to be one of those things thats just set up close enough for everything that I play.

A friend shares the same challenge in owning an arm that doesn't allow for easy VTA adjustment. He copes by using an index card across which he's scribed a line for the optimal arm tube height for the various thickness LPs he plays. It's still a not quick and easy adjustment (set screw on the arm pillar), but he's gotten the process down to about 20 seconds and feels pretty comfortable doing it. Of course, this clearly falls into the category of "how much is the difference worth."

Regards,

Grimace, have you tried lower than parallel? Many cartridges correct vta is lower in the back than level.

I had it about parallel (and perhaps a little lower on 200g)and that was too low. Cymbals and strings were badly rolled off. I raised it a very little bit using 180g record for the height and that seemed to do the trick, even for 200g vinyl. I'm very happy with the sound now.

I'm afraid that using the allen key to adjust for every record isn't feasible. If nothing else, the table sits too low on my cabinet. I'd have to crawl around on the floor to do it. Plus the light is bad so I'd have to use a flashlight. I'd rather just turn it on and listen and save my knees.