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Tri-Planar with no anti-skate?

On a hunch I removed the AS weight entirely from my new TP 7 (Merrill table & Ortofon Kont H cart).

The sound improved to an astounding degree: tons more body, much more solid imaging.

Certainly, I must not have had the anti-skate optimally adjusted, I am curious if others prefer it this way too.
paulfolbrecht
nsgarch's avatar
nsgarch
2,524 posts
 
Your cartridge has a (semi) line-contact stylus. Generally, these require just a fraction of the AS used for elliptcal styli. I don't know how the the TriPlanar is calibrated for AS, but most tonearms still match the AS to the VTF, an old holdover from the pre line-contact days.

If the VTF of your cartridge is around 2 grams, one gram or less of AS should be plenty.
paulfolbrecht OP
603 posts
 
Right now VTF is set right at the recommended 2.5g.
dan_ed
2,451 posts
 
Paul,

What you heard by reducing AS is what several of us are still enjoying with the Triplanar.

Doug Deacon found out a while back that the performance on the Triplanar/UNIverse combo can be improved substantially by lowering the AS force. Following his lead I have found that this also works very well with my Tri/XV-1s combo. We now use a few silicone rubber o-rings for AS weights on our Triplanars. Hopefully, Doug will see your thread and offer the correct o-ring size.

You then listen for slight mis-tracking, sibilance, etc, and then add another o-ring until it is gone.

I've found this to work with my Basis Vector tonearm as well.
dougdeacon
3,338 posts
 
Paul,

Glad to see you're enjoying this discovery. I did this a year or two ago and shared the results here. Several other owners confirmed what you're now hearing.

Depending on the cartridge, the LP and the tracking conditions, the weight of the bare dogleg doesn't always provide enough A/S for clean tracking. I described our solution, the O-rings Dan mentioned, in my 9-16-2006 post on this thread. We play with anywhere from 1 to 6 O-rings on the A/S dogleg. Other cartridge's requirements may vary, but that will give you a starting point.

While you're at it, read that whole thead from the top. Some (not all) of the tips I presented might help you get even more from this extraordinary tonearm. A couple tips won't apply if your TriPlanar is the latest model VII upgraded version, but they'll give you some perspective on Tri Mai's latest developments.

There are other tweaks which enhance performance still further, but you'll have to email me for those. They're a bit racy for a public forum! ;-)

Enjoy!
Doug
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