I'm a late poster to this thread. But I recently purchased a VPI Classic 1 turntable with the stock JMW 10.5i SE tonearm AND the CA Maestro Wood cartridge, and I thought I would share my experiences. In response to Dainapoo's 12/31/10 post, Musical Surroundings, the US distributor of Clear Audio products, specifies a compliance rating of 15 for the Maestro Wood. Assuming that the effective mass of the JMW 10.5i SE tonearm ranges somewhere between 9 and 11 grams, the Vinyl Engine resonance calculator computes the cartridge/tonearm resonance of the Maestro/JMW combination to be 10 Hz at either extreme. So, resonance compatibility, at least by the numbers, does NOT pop out as problematic.
Next, I spent quite a bit of time fiddling with the set up of my cartridge and tonearm. As I mentioned in another OP, I used the VPI jig to adjust alignment and overhang. The VPI jig incoporporates the Baerwald (sp?) geomtry in its construction. I also own a small bubble level designed for tonearm setup.
I used the bubble level to accurately adjust azimuth by placing the level on the tonearm head perpendicular to the wand and carefully lowering the tonearm onto an old record and adjusting the azimuth by twisting the weight on the back of the arm. Frankly, it's a pain in the as* because everytime I fiddled with the weight, I screwed up VTF. Ultimately, I made both adjustments.
Now, a lot of discussion above was devoted to SRA/VTA. I appreciate that record manufacturing processes can affect optinmal SRA/VTA, and I suppose to some degree azimuth too. I agree that the best approach is to adjust tonearm height to acheive a horizontal level of the tonearm head while the stylus is sitting on a record. Or, from the perspective of the stylus, 90 degrees. The bubble level made the job easy. As with azimuth, I placed the level on the tonearm head, but this time aligned the level with the wand, and adjusted the tonearm height until I achieved the desired SRA/VTA. Later, I fine tuned the SRA/VTA in the manner described above to achieve by ear optimal SRA/VTA.
I went through this detailed discussion because maybe I don't understand all the techno-talk, or perhaps I have an extremely undiscriminating ear -- which has its advantages. But after all the fuss adjusting my JMW 10.5i SE tonearm and Maestro Wood cartridge, I'm 100% satisfied with the performance of my rig. Trackability is perfect; no groove junping. The Maestro could navigate the most complex and dynamic classical music tracks. Couldn't be happier.
So I guess I'm just a bit confused. What's the problem??? What am I missing?? Have any respected reviwers commented that the Maestro Wood is not compatible with the JMW uni-pivot??
