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VTA and HTA overhang

I was adjusting VTA on my tonearm tonight and out of curiosity decided to check how it effected the overhang according to my MINT LP protractor. To my surprise, very small changes to VTA on my 12" arm are quite noticeable when trying to align my stylus to the arc on my alignment protractor.

My question is to all of you who change VTA for each LP. How do you compensate or adjust for the resulting change in Horizontal Tracking Angle (HTA) or overhang each time you change your VTA setting?

Besides the hassle of adjusting VTA for different LPs, this is another reason I don't fuss with VTA once I have found a good setting for the majority of my LPs. I wonder if those who attribute sonic differences to VTA changes are not also hearing slight changes to alignment which surely effects the sonics.
peterayer

Showing 2 responses by ketchup

ketchup
688 posts
 
The only way the offset would not move when adjusting VTA up or down is if the tonearm post was curved.

The Eminent Technology ET 2 tonearm has a curved post for this exact reason. The part is called the arc block or VTA block. The arc block is stationary and the bearing housing rides the arc of the arc block as VTA is adjusted to keep overhang dead on.
ketchup
688 posts
 
Ketchup, I was not aware of that feature on the ET arms. Very interesting

It is pretty cool. I don't know of any other arm with this feature. After I posted above, I realized that the height of the ET2 arm can also be adjusted to compensate for vinyl of differing thicknesses without moving the bearing housing in an arc (which you would not want to do in this case because that would effect overhang). To do this, you move the arc block up and down on the post.

So, you can either move the bearing housing up and down on the arc block to adjust SRA without effecting overhang or move the arc block up and down on the post to adjust arm height for vinyl of varying thicknesses, also without effecting overhang. Moving the arc block on the post is not as easy and can't be done on the fly like moving the bearing housing on the arc block, but the capability is there. Bruce Thigpen thought of everything when designing the ET2!
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