Cartridge Opinions - Sorry

What tonearm adjustments do you view as necessary to be considered a good tonearm for yourself?

@scar972 The reason I like the Triplanar is that its so adjustable. You can dial in the VTA (the VTA tower pioneered by Triplanar is now seen in a variety of different arms) with great ease and on-the-fly, you can adjust the azimuth, you can even adjust the mechanical resonance. The bearings are in the same plane as the LP surface; this allows for a more constant tracking pressure when dealing with warp and bass modulation. I think the ability to mess with the mechanical resonance is what I find most valuable because the mass of a cartridge is always a variable in that; this means that the arm works with a wider range of cartridges.


To give you an idea of what that's about, I used to have a Graham 2.2. I tried using a Grado wood body cartridge in that arm and encountered something called the 'Grado dance' although this is not something that is a particular fault of Grados (which are a great cartridge) or for that matter the arm. This was simply because the arm mass in tandem with the suspension of the cartridge could set up a resonance (particularly noticeable at the beginning of the LP, where the resonance could cause the stylus to leap out of the groove). In addition the cartridge would mistrack when the music got more intense.The Triplanar has a similar mass, but by setting up the counterweights correctly the problem is avoided entirely and the Grados track effortlessly in that arm.

@chakster

Even with MM some people always like high output, don't know why, some people think louder is better (I do not agree).

I think it depends on the phono stage, if you have a not so good phono stage with not so much gain the high output cartridge could make sense, if you have a very good phono stage the high output cartridge will work against you. I have tested on my system a Denon MC and Stanton (concorde?) MM, the MM output brings a radio station on my left speaker and lots of noise, the MC won't, now this specific issue could be related to other electrical EMI/RFI conditions. Hopefully I would be able to test some more soon.

Ralph following your comments it would seem the entire "magic" of TT reproduced audio it is most closely related to mechanical parameters (rigidity, mass, adjustments etc) than the electrical ones (MC or MM etc, even the cartridge stylus (mechanical) shape and material will have more impact in the final result.

@luisma31 Well if the cartridge won't track properly its not going to be all that magical :)  You really do want to get that bit right.


Now you may have noticed something- with MM cartridges you can't get as much bandwidth. This probably isn't a big deal since the LP is bandwidth limited above about 45KHz or so and there probably isn't any information up there anyway other than noise. But I'm looking at this from a phase shift issue- when you have out of band frequency fluctuations they can introduce phase shift in the audio band, although for the most part it will be above 8 or 9KHz so this may not be much of a concern. But I like to cover all the bases- its very much like looking after the little things that add weight to a bicycle- the more you get right, the more likely the final result will have more detail, deeper wider soundstage, stuff like that.


So I'm a bit hesitant to say which is more important to get things right (get the 'magic'). But if the cartridge mistracks it certainly won't happen. But if it is tracking effortlessly, that is when its important that all the electrical parameters are right too. So I guess I see it as a bit  like a string of pearls  :)

Dear @atmasphere  : "   I used to have a Graham 2.2. I tried using a Grado wood body cartridge in that arm and encountered something called the 'Grado dance' although this is not something that is a particular fault of Grados (which are a great cartridge) or for that matter the arm. This was simply because the arm mass in tandem with the suspension of the cartridge.........."

Any one that owns an unipivoted tonearm design has very low knowledge levels on the tonearm/cartridge overall issue and you are not an exception to that. Good that you are improving about.

All unipivots no matters mass  cartridge always " dance/jump " inside the grooves generating higher tracking distortion levels than non-unipivot tonearm designs.

Not only Triplanar but any gimball tonearm design handled that problem in better way but can't avoid it completely even if the resonance frequency between the tonearm and cartridge is in the 8hz/10hz-12hz " ideal " range and exist only one posibility to put that groove jumping out of the " equation " or at least at minimum.

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.