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Cardas Upgrade - Arm Balancing Problem

Hey guys, I just upgraded my RB300 arm wires to the Cardas wire set-up and installed a new cartridge on it all at the same time. The cartridge is the Goldring 1042.

When I balance the arm while the tracking is set to zero the arm floats all the way up. The counter weight (standard) is set all the way to the "front part" of the rear stub and the arm floats all the way up to its highest position.

Is the Goldring that light, or is the wire that much lighter than the standard wire? Did the guy who did the upgrade screw up some kind of bearing?

BLR
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sean
6,231 posts
 
Sounds like the cartridge is too light for the arm / counterweight combo. Either that or the wire itself is binding up somehow and trying to push the arm up. Could be a combo of the two things too. Sean
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blrad22
5 posts
 
How about if I were to remove the spring from the tracking adjuster and adjust the tracking force using a gauge and the counter-weight?
zaikesman
3,017 posts
 
I don't know how your second-post proposal would work if you can't even get the arm/cart to balance out with the counterweight at its lightest setting. The tracking force adjuster adds downforce to the business end; removing the spring isn't going to help you get the cart back down from up in the air. Sounds like you might need to add a headshell weight, but why not first check the specs on your new and old cart's to see what the weight difference might be? If you don't spot a culprit there, maybe email Cardas to ask about any potential difference in wire weight with their product. Or it could be both factors combined. Regardless, adding some mass to the headshell is the usual method to solve this problem.
brucegel
151 posts
 
I agree with Zaiksman,a small bit of blue tak or equivalent will help but now you may need to focus on how well this combo can trace grooves.
blrad22
5 posts
 
I know what happened now guys. Ispoke to a few people, and what I found out is:

The guy who did the wire upgrade most likely did not set the tracking force to 3 before disassembling the arm. Therefore, the spring came out of position and was now not optimal. I brought it back to the same guy who did the upgrade in the first place and he removed the spring and set the weight using the counterweight, which is what he suggested to me in the first place.

Zaikesman, the spring in the arm will always add a little upforce, if you remove the spring the arm will not float regardless where the counterweight is or how light the cartridge is. I too did not know this. Origin live suggests setting the tracking force to 3 (which will act like there is no spring at all) and adjust the tracking force using just the counter weight. Somepeople say go one better and remove the spring completely as it adds resonance.

If anybody has any suggestions as to the accuracy of what I have wrote above, I would greatly appreciate it. TWL comes to mind, where are you.

BLR
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