The famous or not so famous Grado wobble


I currently have a Grado Reference sonta (super sound) cartridge.....and after about 300 hours...it has developed a wobble or shutter while on the record.....and not ALL records?? This has happened before (a long time ago) and I was wondering if any of you hve experience the same? What did you do to fix it?? I, at one time, even had Joe Grado himself look at the set up and he could not find a cure....could it be put cartridge set up? poor arm (doubt it) ?????? Any help????
P.S. I have a Linn Sondeck with Itoch arm on a very light table (could this be the problem?) on wooden floors.
rwd

Showing 1 response by sdcampbell

I have a Grado Reference cartridge mounted in a Rega RB900 arm, mounted on a VPI HW-19 Mk 4 turntable (hardly a light TT). I also have occasional problems with the Grado "wobble". The floors in my house are wood, suspended above a 3-foot crawl space, and with recorded material that has lots of deep bass (such as pedal organ), the problem can be acute. I've come to the conclusion that my Grado, and maybe yours, is vulnerable to acoustic feedback.

I suspect that your problem is due to the light turntable AND the floors. A good turntable isolation base might help (such as the Bright Star Big Rock), but if your setup allows you to wall mount a turntable shelf, that might be your best bet. The other precautionary step you should take is to make sure the tonearm cable is well isolated and not feeding acoustic vibrations back up into the tonearm. I wrapped the phono cables (leading from the Rega arm to the phono preamp) in bubble pack material, so the cables don't directly touch the audio cabinet surfaces. These sorts of problems can be aggravating, so try a number of approaches to improve the isolation of your turntable.