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Clearaudio Reference Mistracking

After owning a Linn LP12/Ittok for almost 19 years, I thought it was time to make one last effort for a phono upgrade. I was prepared to take delivery of a great condition Versa Dynamics 1.2 only to be told by the seller his friend's child damaged the arm. Oh well....back on the hunt. Finally I came across a great deal on a Clearaudio Reference table/arm.

The arm installation manual suggests setting the height so that the bottom of the rail is an inch above the platter. I did this, and leveled the arm assembly, adjusted the arm so the cartridge parallels the platter as it moves from the outer to the inner platter. And I set the tracking force to 1.7g on my Benz Glider cartridge with a Shure stylus force gauge.

The sound is magnificent...resolution, bass extension and 3D all in a whole new league...another story. However, there appears to be a lot more sensitivity to dirt or dust on the LP than ever before with the Linn. The stylus tends to stick a lot more in various places on LPS and in particular, more frequently as the arm is near the inner platter. Cleaning records helps a lot but still this is a typical problem.

Do any other Clearaudio users have this problem? And with the arm assmbly 1 inch above the platter, the top of the cartridge is not at all parallel to the platter, i.e., the front of the cartridge is tipped way down relative to the back. Would lowering the arm assembly down, and thus making the cartridge more parallel to the platter improve the tracking? Or perhaps tilting the arm assembly down just a wee bit toward the spindle be of any value? Or is the Benz Glider known to be not a very good tracker? On some LPs, this is not a problem. On others, even with serious vacuuming (VPI 16 cleaner) this problem happens a lot on the last track or so of some LPs. I have also increased the tracking force but this has not made much of a difference.

One side note here: I do not have a ground lead from the turntable to my phono stage (ARC PH2) any more and now the little bit of hum before in my system is gone.

Any help here would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

John
jafox

Showing 1 response by gregm

gregm
3,395 posts
 
Lowering the arm to bring the stylus to a ~15 degrees angle and checking that the cantilever is 90 deg vertical to the arm's tracking line, helped -- i.e. there were FEWER occasions of sticking. Although this was with a clearaudio cartridge (can't remember which), it might help you a bit -- until musicalsurroundings give you the solution.

As Kelly notes, you're not alone in this!
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