Tonearm adjustments on the fly

Unless you can make adjustments from your listening position Vernier adjustments are not a good thing. A tonearm has to be fixed rigidly to the same structure as the platter. This helps drain vibrational energy away from the arm. It also assures the proper orientation of the stylus to the groove as long as you still have the eyesight to set it. Those nasty grub screws have a purpose. Spurious structures also tend to resonate. The most important asset are appropriate scales so you can return to your settings instantly. For most of us tonearms are set it and forget it devices. The more you fiddle with your arm the more likely you are to break something by mistake. I know somebody whose shirt sleeve just got caught under the arm reaching for an adjustment. He ripped the cantilever off. Those of us with workshops know you never work on anything with long sleeve shirts on. Usually it is just you that get hurt. Let's see, what's worse, getting sucked into your 15" jointer or ripping off your cantilever?

Right on Clearthinker, except I doubt anyone can hear the difference between record thicknesses. The actual VTA used to cut records is not constant but can vary a few degrees. I think this is just an example of audiophile nervosa.

A nice test. Turn the volume down and put your ear down by the record. Ladies make sure your hair is tied back, same for guys with long hair.
Listen to your arm tracking the record. Ideally you should here nothing. What you do hear is vibrational energy that is leaving the system and reflecting back on the stylus. If you can hear it so can't the stylus! The quieter it is the better your set up. 

Yes, too much time and electrons have been wasted on trying to make the SRA/VTA differentiation understandable or pertinent.

I've heard/read Michael Fremer and Harry Weisfeld mention that any cartridge - even an expensive one - with a glued-on stylus is more likely than not to be askew in some form (tilted, rotated), so that for me throws any talk of getting the cartridge/tonearm/cantilever parallel with the record out of the window as a definitive suggestion.  It's a good starting point and if you want to obsess with the measurements you certainly can, but ultimately you have to like the way it sounds.  I can't talk for anyone else, but I've never had a come-to-Jesus moment after making the suggested adjustments - usually minor tweaks - using various test records or multimeters (haven't sprung for a digital oscilloscope quite yet), and have always adjusted it to sound good to me; if I can't hear a difference, I set it at the recommended setting and go on with my life.

Thanks Millercarbon for reminding me of the words pedantic, polemics and noobs.   

Erudition elevated. Check. Thanks!

Mike Lavigne, I’ve always admired your system and your knowledge and experience. Thanks for contributing here. I’m assuming you are referring to the Durand (at least in part). I’ll look into that once again

thanks.

my room was used for some early Durand tone arm testing, so i heard the various versions, and owned the Talea and then the Talea 2, which did allow for on the fly VTA adjustment. then he developed the Telos, which was higher performance with more mechanical solidity. and now the Tosca even better. neither has on-the-fly VTA adjustment.

i also owned a Triplaner which VTA could be adjusted on-the-fly, and a number of arms bettered it in my particular system. it certainly holds it’s own among choices in it’s price range, i still like it. but it’s not the last word for sure.

hard to pin-point one feature and connect it to why another arm surpasses it. but solidity in the base and bearing tower seems to be a significant factor in ultimate performance. what does it take to engineer in VTA on-the-fly and is it a compromise somewhere?

with the Rockport it was not. but now that would be a $300k-$500k turntable with that arm. it was hugely overbuilt. but that’s what it takes at the top of the food chain. i’m not an engineer, just an observer.

YMMV.