Which way??

Raising the pivot end of the arm (higher VTA) will thin out the sound (less bass, emphasize the treble) and give it more apparent detail. If you are trying to lessen surface noise, try lowering the arm. Go too far down and the sound becomes lifeless and dull. Even a small change can be quite significant.

If your arm does not have a guage or a dial to make incremental changes and repeatable settings easy, try supporting the arm on something like a stack of cards. That way, you can lower the arm by just removing cards one at a time.

Jim,

the VTA affect the surface noise and frequency response. Unfortunately may audio-shlemazels do adjust VTA just in order to correct the systems’ frequency response or to set an optimum surface noise. The frequency response and surface noise are NOT the properties at which you should look while you are seting your VTA. I had a very lengthy post about it a year or so ago. If the local barbarians did not vandalized the post then you will find it should you do a search.

Rgs,
Romy the Cat

Romy- I was checking into your posts and it looks like the "local barbarians" removed all except for 4 very recent ones. Was your member name different a year ago?

Also- Larry, thanks for the card deck idea.

Thanks
Jim

Jim, my user ID was "VeryBigAmp" up to few days back until “someone” changed my password, then granted me a new ID - "catgisnet" and then mapped all local "actively" to this new bogus ID.

Anyhow, you might look at:

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?eanlg&1042680308

Rgs,
Romy the Cat