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Best Counterweight Position?

Some might say "At the opposite end from the head shell" :-)

But how can you be sure if the position that gives you the correct stylus pressure is the best position for your cartridge?

What I recently discovered on my setup is the further back I placed the weight the more lateral resistance was applied to the cartridge, changing the sound for the better.

To accomplish this required me to change the effective mass of the tone arm - several times.

One very simple way to accomplish this was to remove a piece of the outer cable insulation from a thick mains cable. Making a cut down the length of the sleeve allowed me to place it on the arm near the cartridge and the sleeve gripped the arm without allowing any movement.

I then proceeded to recalibrate the tracking force by repositioning the weight more towards the rear of the arm - away from the pivot point

The first attempt made the sound bloated and displayed some nasty effects, so I simply cut off a piece of the Insulation and recalibrated the tracking force.

Once the best sound is achieved you can then make the adjustment permanent by adding a headshell weight that results in the counterweight being placed in the same distance from the pivot point of the arm.

The head shell weight I started with matched the weight of the insulation and then did some fine tuning to get the weight into the correct position.

Now, there are some that will point out that this will change the effective mass of the arm and may upset the delicate balance of tone arm/cartridge compliance matching.

Well, that is true if the cartridge is matched "exactly" to the tone arm, fact is there is most always a fair bit of latitude in this area, allowing for some room for improvement.

If you are of the belief that the effective mass of the arm should not be changed, then, using a lighter counter balance weight will allow you to place it further back.

In my case I have a Rega RB250 and a Denon DL103, which is not "the best" match, but by adding some mass to the tone arm this cartridge really performs extremely well and brought the compliance/tone arm match closer to the recommended settings.

Yes, the compliance match is one reason for the better sound, but getting the counter weight further from the pivot point also made the DL103 perform much better IMHO :-)

What improvements did I notice - much smoother reproduction in the high frequencies, more texture in the bass frequencies, improved imaging and bigger sound.

Cost - just some of my time and the headshell weight, about $10.

Something to try on those cold winter nights :-)
williewonka
williewonka OP
3,075 posts
 
I have read posts on other forums that also support moving the weight to attain a better sound. Further back for higher mass arms and closer to the pivot point for lower mass arms.

I do agree that adding weight/mass to my arm would bring the resonant freq closer to 10 hz, which accounts for most of the improved sound from everything I have read - that was the main reason for this exercise.

All I can say for certain is that the sound has improved for the better and as Raul said it's about the music and personal preference.

I'm not saying this approach would work for all cartridge/tone-arm combinations, but it did for mine. It costs very little and it may just sound better :-)
nandric's avatar
nandric
4,086 posts
 
The correlation is contra-intuitive by the counterweight;
the heavier the counterweight the lesser the (arm)mass because a heavier counterweight get nearer to the pivot.
One can of course also reduce the arm-mass with lighter headshells (ususually done by FR- tonearms) but I don't like light headshells. This imply more counterweights as
some tonearms provide ( Triplanar, Sumiko 800, etc). The aim however is to get the resonance around 10 Hz as already mentioned. My Sumiko 800 has 5 counterweights meant for carts from 6 -22 g. My Triplanar has 4 but both have fast headshells while the obvious presupposition is to get those counterweights as near as possible to the pivot. In the discussion about the Triplanar however this presupposition is not accepted as a rule. One should experiment with different positions with the weights and choose the best sounding one. As is, alas, so often the case 'it depends'. I hate this expression btw.

Regards,
Ag insider logo xs@2x
rauliruegas
13,064 posts
 
Dear Williewonka: +++++ " It costs very little and it may just sound better ... " ++++++

IMHO that you like it more not necessary means sound better, maybe different but I doubt seriously that that " sound better " is really better.

Anyway, as I posted what you like it is fine because you are the one that has to live with that kind of sound.

Regards and enjoy the music,
R.
williewonka OP
3,075 posts
 
Here is one of the sites I referenced that made me think about proceeding down this path

http://www.basisaudio.com/docs/tnm_vcr_mtw_specs.pdf

I'm not saying its correct - I'll leave that to the reader :-)

There is a tendency to believe that the tone arm manufacturer has done all the math for us and got it right. How could this be when in fact each cartridge you put on the arm would result in a different counterweight position.

You also have to account for cartridge design, cantilever materials etc. and their reactions to a given arm. It gets incredibly complex and there is no way any arm manufacturer could take this into account. At best, an arm is designed to work with cartridges having a defined compliance range and weight range.

I do think that it is worth investigating, given all of the arms on the market, each with different counterweight positions and some arms having multiple counterweights.
williewonka OP
3,075 posts
 
Raul - agreed "sound better" is subjective to the listener

The changes l have made sound better to me - all I am suggesting to forum readers is that trying this is not a huge expense for which they may achieve a "perceived" audible, improvement.

Without the master tapes and the original recording/playback equipment I am unable to definitively state the quality "sounds better", but improvements in fidelity, sound stage and detail I tend to quantify as "sound better"

Also, your "doubt" appears to be based on the assertion that the best position for all counterweights is close to the pivot point. However, you are not able to experience the improvements I have actually heard.

A thought - At one point in time people doubted that flight would be possible - just maybe there is something to this? :-)

Anyhow - thanks for the discussion
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