Those freakin' lines, those freakin' wires and that freakin' cartridge. Aaaaaaaaaargghhhhhhh!!!!!!!.........
Spent more than 2 hrs. just to properly mount my new cart.
Was able get hold of the protractor that akyat was talking about, now, problem was I've been seeing alot of different measurements of those two points from various sites. enjoythemusic provides one that has measurements of (from center of spindle) 60mm 1st point and 124mm 2nd point. From another site, they posted a different measurement from the ones provided by enjoythemusic.com (66mm 1st point and 120mm 2nd point). Which of the 2 is correct? I don't know
I endedup using the one provided by enjoythemusic.com. Why? Beats me. ;D
Ok, everything started with a breeze but then "all hell broke loose" when I was already installing my new cart. Ang hirap pala! One really has to be very careful in installing those new carts especially when you're already in the part where you'll be plugging those small delicate wires to the cart. Alalay lang pala when pushing those terminals dahil baka mabali since malambot lang siya. Another thing, alalay din sa pag-higpit ng screws at baka madisgrasya yung cart. Akala ko ayun na, di pa pala. Instead of the usual bolt head on the tonearm, I inserted those bolts from below the cart, the nuts are now on the tonearm (guys, is this correct?). Why? The nuts are somewhat wider, maliit lang allowance nung bore from the cart body, and may damage the cart body once I get to tighten them. Hirap lang i-screw dahil sa ilalim ka naghihigpit.
Mukha ngayon may sungay yung tonearm ko. Ahehehehehe........... First, I re-adjusted the counter weight to the cart's specifications. Dapat pala naka 0 din yung bias while aligning, kaya 0 ang ginawa ko. All the while I went through aligning both points with just a breeze until I noticed that my new cart was somewhat concave in shape going towards the rear-end. Naknangteteng naman o!
So I ended up re-aligning my new cart for another hour.
At this time, I remebered stereophile's posts talking about overhang and stuff like that. So I decided to set my cart in such a way that the screws would be centered within the tonearm slots. I further re-adjusted the overhang so that cart's edge would protrude by atleast or approximately 1.5 to 2 mm from the edge of the tonearm inorder to align itself on the 2 points and the grid of the protractor. Yahooo!!!!.... Pumantay nga dun sa mga linya ng dalawang points. ;D After this, I re-checked for tracking force and set for bias as recommend by stereophile in his posts. By the time I started to spin my table it was already past 10pm (7pm ata ako nag-umpisa,eh
). Results, I was able to minimize siblance and keep inner groove distortion "at bay" and sometimes even zero inner groove distortion with some lps. Whoahey!!!...... Geeez, I was spinning one lp after another and I ended up retiring at around 3am. Could it be in the cart or did I correctly installed my new cart. Hirap pala, masakit sa likod. ;D ;D
Tools :
1. Cartridge Protractor from enjoythemusic.com (free) ;D
2. Used/Battered LP to compensate for VTA during alignment
3. small/short screw driver (used the one that came with the clearaudio cleaning kit)
4. Magnifying Glass (got mine from NBS, Php75 lang, ga platito pa ang laki
;D )
5. Shure Stylus Force Gauge (ubos pambili ko ng plaka dito
)