Turntable advice / opinion on setup / sound.

@dover 

You'll have to help me with some terminology here!  What do you mean by vertical bearings?  I don't think you mean the bearings in the pivot that allow the arm to rotate in the horizontal plane?  The other bearing is a knife edge bearing where the knife edge itself is horizontal, allowing the cartridge to lift vertically.

In reality, I have only adjusted the arm height when changing cartridges, or when I changed the thickness of the platter mat.  Changing the arm height is not the best feature of the SME.  I use a reticulated scale to get the arm parallel to the record surface.

The azimuth roll you describe should also be obvious when lifting the arm to cue it.  I'll have a look next time I am home, but my instinct is that the knife-edge bearing is parallel to the cartridge face?  In that case, my brain is not wired to understand how the cartridge rolls 

@dover 

I’ve just had a look at a picture of my SME and my recollection was wrong - the knife-edge bearing is not parallel to the cartridge face, so I agree about azimuth roll.  The bearing is at right angles to the arm at its base, but the arm then bends.

Although the headshell is described as fixed, it is designed to allow some rotation to adjust azimuth, which is a simple adjustment.

I was probably thinking of an earlier Garrard arm ...

@elliottbnewcombjr

"Apple and Rega may make terrific products, they are both proprietary greedy, neither one will get a dollar from me."

Comparing Rega to Apple is absolutely absurd! Rega is a tiny little company that supports other tiny businesses in it's region as well shares engineering knowledge with them as well as capitalization for R&D and tooling so Rega has a reliable source for the proprietary ingredients they use in their products. This benefits the local economy and provides good paying jobs and benefits there. Rega is a wholly private entity self-funding and supported and is not publicly supported in any way other than revenues generated by it's own enterprise. You should thank them on your hands and knees for their endeavors, or you wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place! 

This really isn’t fair to the OP, he asked for specific help. I’m often guilty of going off topic, but .....

"

1. I listen to every style of music, smooth jazz to hard metal. 
2. I have to turn the volume way up to get the get the level I like which at times has hiss and a tiny bit of hum. Compared to digital sources which have none of these issues. 
3. I find this setup to lack huge stage and warmth. "

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Some of you are complicating what Richard started about WHY we fuss about VTA when radial error is 2%. Why not start a separate discussion.

I think VTA and Anti-Skate are BOTH worth getting as close to ’right’ as your tools and skills allow. I wish I was in an audio club that bought a shared analog magic kit, and other more professional tools that many/most of us will not invest in.

I believe there should be easy arm height adjustment to help with getting VTA correct, then god help you with anti-skate.

btw, The groove is NOT the fundamental cause of inward skate or the need for anti-skate.

With a pivoting arm, there is NATURAL (someone else explain it, somewhere else) inward skate on a GROOVELESS surface, The anti-skate is NEEDED to counter the amount of skate.

When you start with the BLANK (grooveless) side of an LP, you SEE the NATURAL skate, and as you apply the anti-skate, you SEE it’s counter-force in action. No understanding is needed, just use your eyes. Adjust, drop the arm in several places, outer, middle, inner, pick an average, if needed (all 3 not steady), find an average setting that has a bit of inward rather than outward pull.

Next, have a CD and LP version of the same content with distinct imaging. Play the CD, verify you system is balanced left to right, get familiar with the imaging of the CD, then listen to the LP. Good, done. imaging off to one side or the other, make very slight adjustments to anti-skate: a speck less will let the natural skate move the force a bit more to the left channel; a speck more anti-skate will counter the inward skate a bit more, thus more to the right channel. A SPECK, listen. 

As you increase downward tracking force, more anti-skate is needed. The dials on TTs are often inaccurate, for both tracking force and anti-skate.

This is why, anyone who tells you you don’t need anti-skate is WRONG.

@faustuss 

I said 

"3. Keep Your Rega until after other changes. Many people like the Regas, and the P8 also has lots of supporters. My problem with Rega’s is that they are fixed cartridges, not removable headshells; made for their ’lower than normal’ cartridges only 14mm high/ and the arm height is not adjustable! So, if you choose another cartridge, you might/will need a shim kit to raise the arm so VTA/SRA can be set correctly."

I stand, not kneel by that.

Ortofon makes special 14mm high cartridges to fit Rega arms, removing the need for shims.

Please give me a list of 14mm high cartridges.