Azimuth and the Fozgometer

Yet another audiophile discovers that the mirror can lie. Is that a new wrinkle?

But seriously, if you paid the dough for a Triplanar or the like, you are cheating yourself if you don't also set azimuth electronically, at least initially. THEN you can fine tune by ear. Good to know tha the Foz works.

damn, I have always done this by ear. Guess I need to blow $250...

John, I'm surprised you weren't their first customer!! ;--))

Unfortunately (fortunately?) my SME V doesn't allow for such tweaking, so I have to rely on the skill of my cartridge maker. However, the Cardas test record has a white noise track where the L and R channels are 180 deg. out of phase to each other. If your preamp has a "mono" switch, activating it will combine the channels resulting in cancellation -- and when the azimuth is "right on", almost no sound will come out of the speakers. If you use headphones, or a digital VU or voltmeter to do the test (instead of your speakers) you will have no trouble adjusting the azimuth for maximum channel-to-channel cancellation. And you can "high five" yourself for saving $250.
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Hi, I have a cardas test record and a meter. What do I plug the leads of the meter into? RCA Preamp outputs on each channel and compare the results? Then repeat?

I just did it by ear, it's very close as it is, but may have tweeked it for the better (slightly tigher focus now)

I've regularly been able to reproduce the minimal crosstalk position (as measured by a Wally Analog shop) when adjusting by ear (and yes, the final adjustments are VERY small). The Fozgometer is faster, easier to use and less expensive than Wally's device, but unless it's more accurate it wouldn't seem to offer much value for me.

It would be fun to play with, but I personally wouldn't drop $250 just for that. YMMV of course...

I agree with Doug. Someone once told me in my Shure cartridge days (when we eyeballed everything!) that unless the cartridge was obviously "tilted" ;--) it would be "just fine". So for me, everything was "just fine" for many years.

John, the track I use on the Cardas record is No. 3 on Side 2. It's actually 32 concentric (independent) grooves, so you can drop the stylus into any one of them and it will provide a continuous signal of out-of-phase white noise. If you can set your preamp to "mono", you can take a signal out of one (either L or R) of the main outs starting with the main volume at minimum until you find the best meter range setting (unfortunately the tape outs on most preamps will remain in stereo even when the preamp is set to mono ;--) Then you adjust the azimuth for the lowest meter reading. If yur preamp doesn't have a mono setting, then you can put a 'Y' connector on either the main outs or the tape outs and hook the meter to the 'combined' leg of the 'Y'.