Creative and cheap DIY turntable/tonearm tweaks

Putting sand in the arm to increase the arm's mass would require a change in cartridge, because the same cartridge cannot work well with a low mass arm and a high mass arm, as I understand it ... the arm's mass must be appropriate for the compliance of the cartridge.

It's one thing to balance an arm with a counter balance, but increasing the arm's mass would appear to be more detrimental than helpful to me, possibly even damaging.

Jyprez, you're correct in your description of compliance, and all would be exactly as you describe if the record was not turning. As soon as the record starts turning it is not perfectly flat and the cartridge is deflected up and down by small amounts all the time. This is where mass becomes very important, since the higher the mass the higher the inertia to the deflections. If the cartridge compliance is designed to be able to withstand the deflections of a low inertia tonearm it will not work at all well when you add sand and massively increase that inertia.

At best you'll change the resonant frequency of the tonearm - cartridge combo, almost certainly to the detriment of the sound quality. At worst you'll ruin the LP, the cartridge, and possibly even the tonearm bearings.

Jyprez ... you're right ... if it only EVER moved horizontally there would be no problem. But that is never the case, even if the record is not warped. There may not be large vertical deflections, but there are small deflections on all records (at least all that I have).

BTW Twl is way ahead of me on turntable knowledge, but I did recently read an interesting web page on compliance, tonearm mass etc etc ..

http://www.gcaudio.com/Archives/tonearmcartidge.htm