Tom, I always wondered exactly HOW people (who cared to ;-) actually measured cantilever angle. One dare not risk damage to the cartridge by trying to put an instrument of some kind near the delicate cantilever mechanism while the stylus is resting in a groove - yikes!!
I guess one could take a macro picture using a telephoto lens (to minimize parallax error) and then measure the angle from the photo. But it seems like a lot of effort just to obtain anecdotal (read: useless ;-) information.
Sounds like you'll be ready to go once your new TA arrives. Take all the time necessary for you to feel confident you've zeroed in on the best VTF setting, before going on to establish the vertical SRA point. Do not worry that later, dialing-in the VTF just a little better (like even as much as +/- 0.1 gm) is going to screw up your SRA setting. Why? Because it won't affect it up anywhere near the amount a slightly different record thickness or slightly different cutting angle (as favored by various lathe operators) will. I already stated that SRA can't be an absolute for those reasons -- so don't sweat it. Just get it in the 1.4 degree ballpark and then (hopefully) your new TA has 'on the fly' tonearm height adjustment so you can adjust the SRA slightly for each recording. One of our members, dougdeacon, does that all the time using his Triplanar arm. He even notes the correct arm setting on each record!
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I guess one could take a macro picture using a telephoto lens (to minimize parallax error) and then measure the angle from the photo. But it seems like a lot of effort just to obtain anecdotal (read: useless ;-) information.
Sounds like you'll be ready to go once your new TA arrives. Take all the time necessary for you to feel confident you've zeroed in on the best VTF setting, before going on to establish the vertical SRA point. Do not worry that later, dialing-in the VTF just a little better (like even as much as +/- 0.1 gm) is going to screw up your SRA setting. Why? Because it won't affect it up anywhere near the amount a slightly different record thickness or slightly different cutting angle (as favored by various lathe operators) will. I already stated that SRA can't be an absolute for those reasons -- so don't sweat it. Just get it in the 1.4 degree ballpark and then (hopefully) your new TA has 'on the fly' tonearm height adjustment so you can adjust the SRA slightly for each recording. One of our members, dougdeacon, does that all the time using his Triplanar arm. He even notes the correct arm setting on each record!
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