A pitch too High!


Recently, I damaged the V2 MM cartridge of Clearaudio Concept Wood turntable, so had it changed with a Grado Prestige Blue. The VTF for V2 is 2.2g while Grado blue stands at 1.5g. I took someone’s help to fix this. He even made azimuth adjustments and it sounded fine. But I soon realised that the sound had become thinner, voice being the primary indicator and just before the stylus landed on the record, it skipped back a bit then hit the record. Sometimes the tonearm would skip all the way out of the record, backwards. I called the guy back, and he felt the VTF should be fixed to around 2g to avoid the backward skip. He did so and that problem was licked and it seemed the voice thinning issue had also vanished. But last night, I put on the first pressing of Aretha Franklin Amazing Grace, and all along I found her pitch way higher, it was all too high pitched and uncomfortable. Seemed the bass had gone missing a little. On my Boulder 866, I could immediately hear the difference when the track was played through Roon. It was not as high pitched, thin as it sounded on analogue. I intend to call the guy again but wanted to know from experts here as to what the issue could be.
terrible

Showing 8 responses by goofyfoot

terrible, I don't think anyone has mentioned this but you might consider lowering the tonearm a slight, slight bit, so that the cartridge is tilting upwards. That will help flush out the sound some and it may help with the higher signal. Aside from that, if you have a gain adjustment in your phonostage, I would try turning that down.

terrible, a tonearm where the cartridge is a slight bit higher than the back of the tonearm will creatte a fuller sound. I said it will flush out the sound but I meant flesh out the sound. A tonearm where the cartridge is lower than the back o the tonearm will bring more detail at the expense of sounding too shrill. Yes, I realize your tonearm right now is exactly parallel. 

terrible, I would say that Vandenhul is probably right but he did state ’in my expeience’ and the likelyhood is that he never had the same problem that you’re experiencing. My cartridge too is in a slightly lower position than the weight on my tonearm. However, if the sound is too shrill, then havng the cartridge a slight bit higher than the weight of the tonearm is the antidote. It shouldn’t be that difficult to determine where your tonearm height is and then adjust it up or down to see what sounds best. If you find that it doesn’t matter and that your cartridge is still sounding shrill, then I’d try turning down the phono amp gain. If that doesn’t work, then I’d load a different cartridge.

Spending $150.00 to retip a $250.00 cartridge seems a little nutty to me. Why not just wait and upgrade to a better cartridge? I had the $600.00 Grado and on certain records, it performed well above what one might expect for that price range. I started out with a Prestige and while it was free of listening fatigue, to me it sounded bloated. Audio Technica might be another good option.

chakster, so your saying that replacing the stylus with XTZ on a $200.00 Prestige cartridge will out perform a $600.00 Sonata? Anyway, isn’t this the same service Soundsmith offers with there stylus and cantilever replacement?

chakster, the XTZ is a cartridge from the 80's, are you certain that Grado will have the XTZ stylus and cantilever in 2021? I had a Grace F12 and they are now defunct, so having the stylus replaced by Grace was impossible. But if you know Grado still has XTZ parts, then it's still an option. It just seems odd that Grado would still have XTZ cartridges or parts from nearly forty years ago.

That being said, I have dealt with Grado where it pertains to repair and they honored a warranty that had expired by about a month. They are top notch when it comes to customer service.

terrible, I would recommend not using the anti skate at all, just to hear what that sounds like. Then, to set the anti skate, I would use a laser disc. 

terrible, mijostyn is right. When putting the needle onto the center of the laser disc or blank record, adjust the anti skate so that the needle stays in place. Then just slightly adjust the anti skate so the the arm then drifts very slowly towards the spindle.

However, I did exactly that and was getting distortion. So I found that by adjusting the anti skate so that the needle stayed in the center of the laser disc and without drift, that this gave me distortion free results. Do not set your anti skate this way until you've tried doing it as described above.