I believe that the screws currently recommended for the Palladian cartridge are made of titanium. Moreover in a separate communication, the inventor associated with acoustic sounds was very positive about the need for titanium screws for best sound. However I don’t recall that he said anything about torque. The maximum permissible torque for a given screw of a given material would not necessarily apply To a determination of the optimum torque for screws that hold a cartridge in place, with the object of best sound quality in mind. So since best sound quality is an elusive and subjective quantity in the first place, I don’t know how anyone would know the best torque for screws used to mount a cartridge. “Don’t overtighten” is good enough. Or experiment with torque to suit yourself.
Cartridge Mounting Hardware
I recently upgraded my tonearm to the Clearaudio Universal. This is a great arm and worth tweaking and experimenting a bit to get the best out of it. My cartridge – Concerto V2 (7 gr.) – came with several sets of cartridge mounting bolts: 5 mm nylon and aluminum flathead screws, and 8 mm stainless hex bolts. No nuts since my cartridge is tapped for the bolt threads. For years I've been using stainless bolts. With those I use a 49 gr. stainless counterweight and it sits nearly as close as it can go to the fulcrum when VTA is dialed in. When I play the Hi Fi News test record the resonant frequency of the arm is more or less at ~10 Hz as far as I can tell.
Conventional wisdom – AFAIK – says that's all good.
I recently saw a Clearaudio photo of my arm with another one of their cartridges in the line (also 7 gr.) and it's mounted with the nylon screws. That got me to thinking about trying it, and maybe trying the aluminum ones too. With the nylon screws I can no longer use the 49 gr. stainless counterweight, and have to change to the aluminum 31.5 gr. counterweight, but that sits farther out away from the tonearm fulcrum (although it looks cooler, IMO). I'm trying that now. With the test record the tonearm resonant frequency is still right around 10 Hz. I'm playing music now and don't notice a difference, but my aural memory for such things sucks, so I have to live with it for a bit, and then revert to see how I feel. This weekend I'll play some records I use to test out setup changes and see if I hear anything for better or worse.
So that makes me wonder what others know and experience about cartridge mounting hardware (and techniques). What's your wisdom on the matter?
Conventional wisdom – AFAIK – says that's all good.
I recently saw a Clearaudio photo of my arm with another one of their cartridges in the line (also 7 gr.) and it's mounted with the nylon screws. That got me to thinking about trying it, and maybe trying the aluminum ones too. With the nylon screws I can no longer use the 49 gr. stainless counterweight, and have to change to the aluminum 31.5 gr. counterweight, but that sits farther out away from the tonearm fulcrum (although it looks cooler, IMO). I'm trying that now. With the test record the tonearm resonant frequency is still right around 10 Hz. I'm playing music now and don't notice a difference, but my aural memory for such things sucks, so I have to live with it for a bit, and then revert to see how I feel. This weekend I'll play some records I use to test out setup changes and see if I hear anything for better or worse.
So that makes me wonder what others know and experience about cartridge mounting hardware (and techniques). What's your wisdom on the matter?