I presume that you had your protractor specifically built for your turntable/tonearm. With that as a given, you ask, "Question: Is this non-parallel result in the headshell normal? It's making me think I may have a bent cantilever or something." If your cantilever is bent by the 5 to 7 degrees that the cartridge is off line, you should be able to see that yourself, just by looking at the cantilever. If the cantilever looks perfectly aligned with the cartridge body, then the answer to your question must be "no". Otherwise, it is not necessarily a problem that your cartridge body is slightly misaligned with the long axis of your headshell. (I assume this is what you meant.) However, I am surprised, as you are, by your finding, given the custom built protractor. It may be due to the fact I may have recently read elsewhere that Yip prefers the Stevenson geometry (of the various algorithms, Stevenson is closest to Technics geometry but not identical), so the discrepancy between Stevenson and Technics probably accounts for the slight twist of your cartridge body. In the end, your cartridge is probably properly aligned, and you are not blown away by the result. Possibly your system lacks whatever it takes to blow you away. Compared to before you did the Mint LP alignment, is the sound at least better than it was? If not, maybe you do need to re-evaluate your equipment. Alignment is not the panacea that some would have us believe it is. And thanks for your post; you may have saved me some money.
Cart not parallel after Mint LP alignment?
Howdy,
So after reading about 1000 paragraphs on how good the Mint LP Tractor is - I purchased one and had a marathon session yesterday with my new SL-1210 M5G, AT440MLa and Zupreme headshell...
After all was said and done - the alignment itself took 90 hard minutes - I am finding the cartridge sitting about 5-7 degrees "right" of center. The actual cantilever and stylus are about as dead on as I wanna go with it for now.
Now a comment and a question....
Question: Is this non-parallel result in the headshell normal? It's making me think I may have a bent cantilever or something.
Comment: I have run 10-12 sides thru the rig so far and I must say - I have not yet heard the "revelation" that others have described when comparing their alignments to other protractors or even the white Technics alignment gauge. The rig sounds good...but...what I am missing here.
I must temper the above by saying I have changed phono stages frequently in the last month as well...I was getting nicely familiar with a Bellari VP-130 and then moved that for a Cambridge which lasted less than a week and I now have a Moon LP3 with maybe 25 hours on it...Even my AT440MLa might have 40-50 hours on it as well....
I am thinking that a whole bunch of stuff might need to "burn" in before the system starts to really reveal itself.
But I am very concerned with the stylus/cantilever on the cart...even with all the moves the Mint required...I expected the cartridge to sit straight in the headshell...perhaps expecting too much?
Appreciate any feedback.
Cheers!
VP
So after reading about 1000 paragraphs on how good the Mint LP Tractor is - I purchased one and had a marathon session yesterday with my new SL-1210 M5G, AT440MLa and Zupreme headshell...
After all was said and done - the alignment itself took 90 hard minutes - I am finding the cartridge sitting about 5-7 degrees "right" of center. The actual cantilever and stylus are about as dead on as I wanna go with it for now.
Now a comment and a question....
Question: Is this non-parallel result in the headshell normal? It's making me think I may have a bent cantilever or something.
Comment: I have run 10-12 sides thru the rig so far and I must say - I have not yet heard the "revelation" that others have described when comparing their alignments to other protractors or even the white Technics alignment gauge. The rig sounds good...but...what I am missing here.
I must temper the above by saying I have changed phono stages frequently in the last month as well...I was getting nicely familiar with a Bellari VP-130 and then moved that for a Cambridge which lasted less than a week and I now have a Moon LP3 with maybe 25 hours on it...Even my AT440MLa might have 40-50 hours on it as well....
I am thinking that a whole bunch of stuff might need to "burn" in before the system starts to really reveal itself.
But I am very concerned with the stylus/cantilever on the cart...even with all the moves the Mint required...I expected the cartridge to sit straight in the headshell...perhaps expecting too much?
Appreciate any feedback.
Cheers!
VP
Showing 9 responses by lewm
Dear vocalpoint, You might be interested to read the following post from Vinyl Asylum addressing just the question you are raising, whether you knew it or not: http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/vinyl/messages/90/901608.html The post supports my recollection that Stevenson and Technics are different. If they ARE different, that may account for the fact that you need to twist your cartridge a bit in the headshell in order to align it with the protractor. You might ask Yip what geometry he uses for Technics tts. I'd be interested to know the outcome. I would repeat however that I doubt this accounts for the fact that you are underwhelmed with your results. |
Tvad, but if cantilever is straight and cartridge is parallel with the long axis of the headshell, then the cantilever is also parallel with the long axis of the headshell. "QED", as we used to have to say in geometry class. So, since your cartridge ended up slightly twisted wrt the headshell, we can conclude that Yip chose a geometry different from the one chosen by the maker of your tonearm. This is not to say Yip is "wrong" to do this. I am sure he knows more about this stuff than I do and has his reasons. The Technics geometry is said to be not so great (based only on internet scuttlebutt), so, if true, that is one good reason right there. |
Dear vocalpoint, The answers to all the questions in your latest and recent previous posts are all to be found in my and Tvad's posts that went before. Please read them and think about it. The protractor does not give a rat's behind about your headshell. The position of the cartridge body will depend upon where the protractor tells you to put it. If you lined up your cantilever true to the protractor, you are done. If then there is a lack of alignment between the cartridge body and the long axis of the headshell, this has to be because the headshell offset angle, i.e., its geometry, is different from the geometry chosen by Yip for your tonearm. This more or less sums up what I have been trying to get across, in less detail. Peace. Out. |
For goodness sakes! What Vinyladdict wrote and what Markd51 seconded and what Dertonearm and others suggested is exactly what I wrote way back at the top. How much more reassurance do you need? The ultimate would be to get Yip to confirm that he uses Stevenson geometry when he makes a protractor for the Technics, if you do not care to believe all the other testimony. |
Dear VP, I guess I did get a little exasperated. But for a while you did not seem to be reading or digesting the responses to your question, which from the get-go contained the information you needed. In fact, you seemed determined to ignore the good advice you got. Anyway, there is a learning curve for all of us, and we all learn from each other and from direct experience. In my case, I had just finished reconciling the fact that the cartridge in my Dynavector tonearm (designed for Stevenson geometry) did not sit square to the headshell after alignment with a protractor designed for Baerwald geometry (the Turntable Basics protractor). That experience brought home to me the effect on cartridge alignment of choosing any one of the major different tonearm geometries, in a way that I had never before appreciated or even cared about. Plus I had read the posts on Vinyl Asylum regarding the Technics tonearm, its shortcomings and its lack of congruence with the nearest formal geometry - Stevenson. I apologize for sounding cranky. Glad you are on the right track at this point. |
Dear Raul, The other reason or the main reason VP's cartridge was not aligned to his headshell was because his MintLP protractor was designed for Stevenson geometry, whereas the tonearm on his Technics tt was designed for Technics geometry. So, even if he were to use the cartridge body as his guide, his cartridge would have ended up twisted with respect to the headshell. At least this is what I understood from reading his initial posts. I have read elsewhere, on Vinyl Engine I think, that the Technics geometry gives no null points across the surface of the LP, and most think it is therefore better to use Stevenson, the closest of the standard choices, when aligning cartridges in the tonearm on the Technics SL series tts. I guess this is why Yip chose Stevenson. By the way, do you really think a bent cantilever straightens itself out under dynamic conditions of playing an LP? Sometimes, maybe. |
Right now, I have no cartridges with "bent" cantilevers, I am happy to say, but it did occur to me that the forces that bend the cantilever in the first place (usually skating force in a pivoted tonearm) are either present or neutralized by anti-skate. If you apply sufficient anti-skate, I suppose the cantilever will move back to a neutral position during play. Sometimes I think also that if the cantilever mount has become that flexible in the lateral plane, the mount is not in good shape. Sorry, VP, this is off-topic I suppose. |