Tonearm/Cartridge Compatability


I am considering installing an Ortofon TA-110 tonearm and 2M Black cartridge on my renovated Thorens TD-124 turntable. However, I have some concerns regarding this combination:
a) Mike Fremer recommends that this cartridge be used in an arm that permits adjustment of VTA and SRA. I believe that the TA-110 has no such adjustment, nor an azimuth adjustment.
b) Using data on Vinyl Engine, I calculate the resonance of the tonearm/cartridge combination to be in the 6.6 range, significantly below the recommended 8 - 11. Consequently, I have some concerns regarding degradation of sound quality, which is my primary criterion.
Can anyone in this forum weigh in on this subject?
Thanks, GK
gregkraus

Showing 2 responses by mulveling

I've had past setups as low as ~ 7.1 Hz calculated resonance; with that cart (Ortofon MC Windfeld) I had phenomenal bass quality/impact, amazing detail retrieval, and razor-sharp imaging, but the top end was too hot for my tastes -- possibly a result of the cartridge's character combined with my speakers (seems unlikely to have been caused by a 7Hz resonance). I do prefer Koetsus, after all. I suppose it depends on your turntable and any warp controls (ring clamp, vacuum hold down) you may have implemented. I had neither.

You could use a lighter headshell to move resonance up into safe range. Ortofon sells an oak & Urushi lacquer headshell @ 9.5 grams that would get you above 7.5Hz. I've used that shell on my high-mass Fidelity Research arm.

You can also get headshells with adjustable azimuth, but that feature usually brings along higher mass. I'd go for a lighter non-azimuth shell; the 2M Black may sound excellent with azimuth fine-tuning, but it also sounds very good on non-adjustable arms.

That Ortofon arm looks like another Jelco-built unit with Ortofon mods; it should be nice. However, by the numbers it's going to be a more natural match with MC carts like the Cadenza series (the Cadenza Red being a very worthy upgrade over a 2M black). I can confirm that the Cadenza/Kontrapunkt series worked beautifully on my own high mass (20g) S-shape FR64fx tonarm. That line has a nice low-ish compliance of 12, great for an 18-20g arm.
Hi Greg,
Fortunately Ortofon always uses the proper @10 Hz dynamic compliance measurement, which is what's expected by most of the online resonance calculators (like the one you were using). Static compliance (i.e. 0 Hz) numbers will be much higher than their 10Hz equivalent, and @ 100Hz numbers (often used by Japanese manufacturers, e.g. Koetsu) will be significantly lower. I've read that you can multiply an @100Hz number by a factor of 1.5x-2x in order to get a very loose approximation of its equivalent @ 10Hz value.

It certainly is annoying to deal with compliance numbers not @10Hz. Even worse would be a listed compliance number without any information on whether it's static/10Hz/100Hz.