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Turntable arm wobbly? Setup advise

Hi I have recently bought another turntable. I had a couple tables a few years back. All Nottinghams. The new one is a spacedeck with heavy kit. I installed the cartridge and looks like its aligned right on my protractor. I've some this before so I'm pretty confident that I got it right. Tracking force is set at approx 2.0 grams for the dynavector xx-2 cart, VTA looks close arm just below parallel in the back.

The sound is pretty good no but to me it looks like the cart is pulling in and out slightly as the record is playing like slightly wobbling to the inside and outside as the record is playing. I don't know if this might have to do with the anti skate? The seems to sound better with no anti skate at all. My dealer I remember years ago told me to just remove the whole anti skate mechanism on my dais.

Also to my eye it looks like the azimuth might be slightly off the head shell is slightly not level. Is there a way to adjust this on the ace space arm.

Thanks, Ryan
128x128ejlif
bifwynne
2,206 posts
 
Hey Stringreen, I just posted a "Kudos to Pter Ledermman" OP about a week or two ago. If you get a chance pull it and take a look at what Peter told me.

For the benefit of others, I'll quickly mention that it was re-tip time for my Zephyr. It seemed just a tad early, so I asked Peter if he noticed whether there were any unusual wear patterns. He advised me that one side of the stylus was worn more than the other side, suggesting that I had an AS problem.

Like you, I also own the VPI Classic, an unstabilized uni-pivot. As most VPI owners know, VPI advises AGAINST using the mechanical AS device. And I followed that advice and the result was a prematurely worn stylus. And yes . . . I did put a little twist on the tonearm wire.

So there are two schools of thought out there: VPU -- no AS; Peter Ledermann -- use AS.

As a compromise, I am using the VPI AS device, but set it to the absolute minimum force. I'll report back in about 1000 hours to let you guys know how it works.

Oh . . . and btw, I can not hear any differemce in sound quality one way or the other.
stringreen's avatar
stringreen
6,485 posts
 
Bifwynne..... when I dumped my A/S, the sound improved. If yours didn'd/doesn't, perhaps something is amiss with your setup. There definitely is an open-ness, and freedom without the A/S in my system.
ejlif's avatar
ejlif OP
1,377 posts
 
It did seem better with other records. Unfortunately my phono amp made a loud noise and now is not playing sound from one channel and the other channel has a rushing noise coming out. Hopefully something amiss with my cartridge setup would not have caused this. The sound was pretty good before this happened so I assume that I had it close.
sarcher30
596 posts
 
It's fairly easy to tell if the spindle hole is off center.
If the blank grooves in between tracks appear to move back
and forth as the record spins then it's off center. The
tonearm has to follow this movement and will appear to move
back and forth. If the blank grooves don't move back and
forth but your tonearm still wobbles then it is something
else.

I believe your tonearm is a unipivot and they will wobble a
little at first till they find equilibrium. If your TT setup
is on a suspended floor footfalls can cause the arm to
wobble for a little while as well.

Sorry to hear about your phono stage. Cartridge setup should
have nothing to do with why it malfunctioned.

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