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Cartridge mounting woes

I purchased a new Hana ML cartridge, and intend to mount it on a "vintage" Empire 698 turntable. The 698 head shell is configured so that the cartridge used thereon must be bottom mounted. Before I ordered the cartridge, I checked with Musical Surroundings, and they indicated that while the Hana screw holes are through-threaded, the ML could be bottom mounted.

I picked up an assortment of M2.5 screws to mount the cartridge, and it turns out the screw heads are too wide to fit into the cartridge screw slots. My research indicates that this will continue to be a problem with other M2.5 screws out there on the market.

Have any of you folks encountered an issue like this? If so, how did you solve it? I've been thinking that maybe headless M2.5 screws (grub screws) would do the job. I'd surely appreciate any ideas that don't involve buying a new tonearm or turntable! Thanks in advance.

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Showing 2 responses by lewm

lewm
12,522 posts
 

I did not originally understand that the headshell has captured nuts. Now that I know that, I’d agree with Dover.  I was once confronted with a similar dilemma.

lewm
12,522 posts
 

"Grub screws", if that’s what you want to call them, might be made to work. I am thinking of threaded rods, essentially, with no head. You may be able to mate the cartridge to that headshell by using nuts from above, on the surface of the headshell, once you've screwed the rods into the threaded holes on the Hana. Problem is that when you tighten the nut, the threaded rod is going to have a tendency to spin in concert with the nut, so the headshell and cartridge never get tightly bonded. I recommend McMaster-Carr as a source of any exotic hardware, like M2.5 grub screws and M2.5 nuts. They’re amazingly fast responders and very reasonable in their cost structure.

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