Well temp, arm drifts from away from center of rec

OK, I am an idiot! Trying to do this tweak I got silicone everywhere!! I need to start over because now the arm is not functioning correctly. Is alcohol the best thing to get this goo off of the table and arm. It took quite a while to get it off of my hands. I tried to do the tweak while keeping the silicone in the cup. Big mistake!! Bob

Thanks Bob,

Always fun to meet with fellow Audiogoners. It was a nice break from my family issues. Have fun with the Well Tempered - it's a great table. We're both lucky to have wives who tolerate and even appreciate our hobby.

David

David,
It was amazing that we happened to only be a couple of miles from each other at the time of my post. It was wonderful meeting you and your wife yesterday. I can hardly wait to try the tweak that you mentioned on this thread. I am certainly not a techy but it seemed that even I could handle the tweak that you mentioned. I wish that we were meeting under more favorable circumstances. Bob

David,
I have emailed you hoping to understand the tweak you mentioned above. Bob

Baranyi,

I owned the Well Tempered Record Player arm, which is similar to the Classic but lacks the anti-skate adjustment. Having observed a Classic arm, though, my opinion is that even at the minimum setting the Well Tempered design applies too much anti-skating force. My solution was to add an extra half twist to the tonearm suspension lines. This effectively eliminates all but the smallest amount of anti-skating force, while still allowing for azimuth adjustment. I never really had cueing drift after I applied this tweak, except for my lousy eye-hand coordination. :-)

If you need more details, contact me outside the forums. I'll be happy to provide more detail.

David

I certainly cannot dispute Chashas1's experience, but the arm design has some level of AS force present even at its minimal setting when setup as the manufacturer recommends. Since the arm doesn't have a cueing platform to hold the arm's position as it drops, some outward travel is to be expected. Drift can be minimized or possibly eliminated by orienting the arm alignment in the mounting hole to minimize twist in the line, but this will result in less than the recommended AS force (which may still work fine in many situations.)

Thank you both for the responses. At least I know that I am not alone having the tonearm having this drifting. I also seems that it can be reduced with someone who really knows the setup. My concern is that it cannot be a good situation for the best sonics. Does anyone know the trick to eliminating this? Bob

I disagree, bill. I used to have a classic and then a reference, and if set up correctly, the arm would drop directly where you wanted it. However, a good technically minded friend set them up, so I'm no help there. You could try George at Stanalog, or even Wally the Wallytractor guy. Wally gave a method of using a stopwatch and timing the drop rate of the tonearm. So don't give up, the info is out there.

This is normal for the WTA. Even when the set to minimize the AS there is still some force present in the design which will cause the drift that you're experiencing. You always have to release the arm slightly further towards the center when starting an LP to avoid your tonearm from drifting back and missing the record entirely.