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Anyone ever use one of these or something similar?


J.4knee

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Jim,

I've used a few such things in the past, have never found any fully useful Some like that one purport to do a lot of things including setting the overhang, but the overhang often has already been locked in place by whoever made the armboard or set up the table. This one like most probably assesses the overhang by the pointer that's supposed to sit exactly on the center of the arm pivot -- except you can't tell exactly where that center is on many arms, and the point slides around and throws the supposed measure off. Moreover, most of these do the "alignment" by lining up the BODY of the cartridge instead of the cantilever, which is the way it's supposed to be done (no real difference if the cantilever is perfectly aligned to the cartridge, but...).

The tools I need and use are the following:

A Shure gram gauge, costing about $25, a must IMO.

An alignment protractor furnished by the cartridge or tonearm manufacturer. The best I've seen comes (or came) with Shure cartridges, because there is an easily seen line that runs directly underneath the stylus cantilever that can be used to line it up. A pic of one (not Shure's) is shown below.

An illuminated magnifier with enough power (2X - 4X) and focal length distance to see the cantilever line up with the protractor's line. I got mine at Ace Hardware for about $8.

A mirror about as thick as an LP, to rest the needle on and look straight down the front of the cartridge to see if it's perfectly vertical and doesn't lean to one side (the "vertical azimuth").

A good eye to set the vertical height of the back end of the tonearm (if you can set it) so that, for starters, the cartridge is level and not raked up or down. This is called the VTA or vertical tracking angle. You may have to fiddle with it from there.

This handy guide provides some good pointers: A Beginner's Guide to Cartridge Setup.

Hope this helps -- Larry

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