Stylus Rake Angle

Raul, My intention was not to present my point of view as fact, but just that, my point of view in a discussion. By all means, correct me if I'm wrong. I'm speaking from my owm personal experience. I don't have instruments to measure such tiny variations in adjustment. I'm a serious tweaker who can't leave good enough alone so I'm well aware of the importance of all of the factors involved. It's just that all things being equal, sra is the most convincing variable to improvement I have so far experienced in the last 30+ years. Once I settle on sra, re-doing overhang doesn't change the sound appreciably well enough for me to notice. Could be a matter of not having the ability to make such a small adjustment on my part. I make final sra adjustments with a sheet of paper or even finer with one side of a plastic record jacket trimmed and placed under the mat. Or should I say 'removed' as I start with a few there already.

Raul, when one slides a cartridge in the headshell 0.3mm to make a very slight change in overhang because the SRA has been adjusted, how does one achieve this tiny move without rotating the cartridge about its ZENITH angle? With some stylii profiles, proper ZENITH alignment matters a lot. Of course it changes over the length of the LP and is only truly tangent at the two null points.

And, if overhang changes, does this not also require a tiny change in ZENITH so that the stylus maintains proper alignment (true tangence) at the two null points?

I did compare the alignment results between the SME protractor and my custom MINT LP arc type protractor and found that the overhang was slightly different. I can't say which is more correct, but the MINT is more accurate and allows for more precise results. I did find the music sounded better also, though this may just be that "I like it" more with the MINT.

One issue with the MINT is that the thickness of the glass is not the same as every LP thickness, so overhang is only correct with LPs that happen to be the same thickness as the glass. Overhang for other thickness LPs will necessarily be different.

If, as you contend, that overhang is more critical than SRA, what do you think about all of the people who adjust VTA for each LP without also adjusting overhang? The people with whom I have spoken feel that proper SRA is more critical than perfect overhang, so they don't bother to adjust both with each LP. Could you imagine the time involved to do both for every LP?

I'm only asking these questions to learn more about the subject. I'm very curious about how each of these adjustments effects the others and really which is the most critical. I, for one, adjust my arm and cartridge to be the best compromise with a group of my favorite and most familiar LPs. I don't have the patience to adjust settings for different LPs.

Dear Raul, Perhaps I am mistaken but was there not a time when you expressed the opinion that small errors in overhang do not make much audible difference, may not even be "important"? I thought that was your position vis a vis that of Dertonearm et al, who was arguing the opposite. If my memory is accurate, what made you change your mind by 180 degrees?

Dear Csontos: I understand your point an opinions and I can tell you that's really tiresome to make overhang changes everytime but IMHO is necessary. Of course is up to each one of us do it or not: our each one privilege.

I really appreciated all your posts. Only under a friendly discussion we can improve our self.

regards and enjoy the music,
R.

Doug and Csontos seem to have the way of it.

The cutting stylus on an LP cutterhead only does about 10 hours before it needs to be replaced. You'd think they were all exactly the same but after replacement you wind up resetting a lot of parameters on the cutterhead. Tiny little adjustments can have a huge effect on the groove you cut, so its anything but cut and dried. I find the talk about SRA a bit amusing as a result.

As the stylus wears, sometimes you have to make little adjustments, like the stylus temperature. Funny thing- it cuts a slightly different angle depending on the temperature. Some LPs don't have very much in the way of dynamics so you can change groove depth a bit to allow for more time on the LP, conversely if something has a lot of dynamics or out of phase bass, you might cut a little deeper. So groove depth affects stylus angle too.

Bottom line: don't get too upset about it. Its more important for the mastering engineer to cut a good groove than it is to get it exactly at 92 degrees. You are never going to be too far off either- the stylus won't cut right if its a few degrees off... trust me on this one- there are far more important things to worry about :)