Hi Richard,
You obviously know way, way more about this stuff than I do. The KAB Groovemaster was one of Stanton's DJ carts, fitted by Kevin @ KAB with a stylus along the lines of a Pickering D3000. That stylus was destroyed by someone accidentally (I went to play a record one day, and it was bent completely sideways).
The JICO imitation stylus sounded perfectly good for the first few months, so I don't think the diamond was off-alignment in the beginning. However, there were immediate differences from the original - with the JICO, records were much more likely to skip from anyone walking around the room, lead-groove skip became common, etc.
I suppose it's possible that whatever inferior material they used has caused the suspension to sag, changing the VTA of the diamond. I did mess with adjusting that some, and it did seem to help a little bit, but just a little.
Right now I'm playing with a Grado Gold I got from someone on here, trying to get that aligned perfectly. First attempt was not great, second attempt pretty good, but I think there's still room for improvement. But I fear that whatever mistracking the old cart was doing did do some damage to some records (comparing a few that I know I listened to and heard distortion with the old cartridge to records that I did not play at all during that period), so I'm loath to do much more testing with that needle.
You obviously know way, way more about this stuff than I do. The KAB Groovemaster was one of Stanton's DJ carts, fitted by Kevin @ KAB with a stylus along the lines of a Pickering D3000. That stylus was destroyed by someone accidentally (I went to play a record one day, and it was bent completely sideways).
The JICO imitation stylus sounded perfectly good for the first few months, so I don't think the diamond was off-alignment in the beginning. However, there were immediate differences from the original - with the JICO, records were much more likely to skip from anyone walking around the room, lead-groove skip became common, etc.
I suppose it's possible that whatever inferior material they used has caused the suspension to sag, changing the VTA of the diamond. I did mess with adjusting that some, and it did seem to help a little bit, but just a little.
Right now I'm playing with a Grado Gold I got from someone on here, trying to get that aligned perfectly. First attempt was not great, second attempt pretty good, but I think there's still room for improvement. But I fear that whatever mistracking the old cart was doing did do some damage to some records (comparing a few that I know I listened to and heard distortion with the old cartridge to records that I did not play at all during that period), so I'm loath to do much more testing with that needle.