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setting VTF with a digital guage

Hello AGoners,
When I first purchased my VPI classic 1 I used the supplied shure stylus force guage. I decided to try a digital guage and then purchased a acoustech digital guage. My question is about the height of these guages. Both the shure guage and the acoustech digital are taller than even a 200gr LP. I have tried to make a small cardboard pedestal to place the guage on to make it level with a 180gr. record since that is what I play the most. Are you guys setting the stylus force guage on top of the platter or do you try to set the stylus force guage level with the playing surface?
andyprice44
captain_winters
133 posts
 
Offsets using VTA tower on this thread

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?eanlg&1366675416&openfrom&13&4#13
actusreus
733 posts
 
Andy,
One thing to keep in mind is that with the Classic tonearm, the VTF decreases as the tonearm gets closer to the platter level so you do want to make sure the VTF is measured at the record surface level. The scale you have gets pretty close, but is still a bit too high to give you a precise reading. I purchased a digital scale from ebay (APTP445) that has a relatively big, flat measuring surface and I built a step with a bent credit card to measure the VTF precisely at the record surface level. It did make a difference compared to the type of scale you have. So to answer your question, yes I do measure the VTF level with the playing surface and it is critical to do so, especially if your cartridge is designed to perform optimally withing a narrow range as my Delos. .
dopogue
1,773 posts
 
There appears to be a belief that VTF doesn't vary across the record and that checking it at one point is all that is necessary. Depending on the table and arm, I've found that this is not necessarily the case. So what do you do? Try to check all across the record and determine an average. At least that's what I've been doing.
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