Dear @melm @lewm : """
Audiophile insecurity and smart promotion drives many hobbyists to the most expensive devices when the simple one will do the job. """
That statement is correct, the issue is why audiophiles go or gone looking for those protractors including the very expensive ones.
@cleeds posted something critical for that issue : "
That precision is iffy and varies depending on the gauge and the arm. A dedicated gauge doesn’t suffer that problem. "
The key words there are: DEDICATED GAUGE:
that is a MAIN responsability of any tonearm manufacturer, it's him whom must gives that dedicated gauge along each tonearm to each of their customers as VPI is doing it.
The problem is that almost all of us, no, all of us through the years accepted ( by ignorance. ) to bougth/buy tonearms with a " ridiculous " align gauge that were totally non-accurated.
As time pass on we all started to learn step by step the critical importance of accuracy when we do our tonearm/TT/cartridge geometry alignment parameters set up and was through the time that we took in count that what the tonearm manufactures gave to us just is totally unaccurated and we have to look for an after market protractors.
I own no less that 15 protractors that includes all the ones named here but the more expensive and I did not buy it because I already understanded that that protractor can't gives nothing different that can help me, even can't really helps to any one.
So, it's the tonearm manufacturer whom must gives that accurated alignment gauge.
The after market protractor manufacturers took advantage from that irresponsability of the tonearm manufacturers and from our each one ignorance levels.
Even today some tonearm manufacturers and several audiophiles just understand in fully way the overall theory behind the tonearm/cartridge alignment set up.
Was Löfgren the gentleman that invented ( yes invented. ) the necessity of tonearm/cartridge accurated alignment and he gave his solutions through his mathematics ( geometry mainly. ) on those Löfgren equations.
Was from his equations where other persons try to made modifications with out real success. Baerwald is one of them where his solution is the same as the one invented by Löfgren ( A ). But was not only Baerwald whom made it something similar but other gentlemans too even Stevenson who had a similar solution to Lófgren A and other solution named Stevenson A where he made on purpose that coincide the inner null point exactly with the must inner groove distance that's a Löfgren input parameter in his equations.
So, how many kind of alignments we really need? 2 or 3 or one dedicated for one specific tonearm?
Not really, we only need one accurated Löfgren A or B alignment protractor and that's all and that is what tonearm manufacturers must have to understand and are responsable to give to each of their customers.
The input parameters in those Löfgren equations are: effective length, inner must groove distance and outer must groove distance.
Then the equations gives the alignment parameters: overhang, off-set angle, both null points and by difference P2S and that's it.
As some one posted here: " no brain cirgury " or " rocket science ", really easy to understand.
Anything out of standard Löfgren solutions are only manipulations of those equations but nothing more and are no better than the original Löfgren solutions but at the end even if could be a sign of better alignment you can't detected if what you have was accurated set up.
Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.
