DaVinci tonearm and azymuth

Hello Ebalog,

0.5 degrees is FAR too coarse of an increment for setting azimuth. I don't care what the numbers tell you. Now, you could get lucky and effect an improvement (say for example that you're off by 0.7 degrees and reduce the error to 0.2), but the odds are against your geting your azimuth dead-on.

If I recall, Wally used to make a device that mimicked one of the Ortofon(?) cartridges - essentially, a knife edge pivot that runs longitundinally along the cartridge body and between the two mounting screws.

The idea is to tighten one screw and loosen the other in order to induce a tilt - with contact between the cartridge body and headshell consisting of the two screws and the knife edge.

Now, the obvious problem here is that you're introducing another material interface between cartridge and headshell. You're also changing the contact surface area. Either change could have an overall deleterious effect on the sound ... or not (not even considering azimuth changes).

You might try experimenting with various materials and actually improve things from an energy transfer perspective. You never know where you're going to end up in this ballgame when it comes to material interfaces, and keep in mind that what works for a titanium cartridge body may well not work with aluminum, coral, ebony, etc.

Try a thin strip of copper. It's easy to cut with a pair of scissors. You should be able to find it in a hobby shop, or alternatively, over here: http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Electronics,_pickups/Supplies:_Shielding.html.

You might also try aluminum foil.

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier

I use the Feickert software for azimuth. I had an interesting experience. A cartridge I tested showed the correct azimuth when it was literally way off from vertical. I thought I had a bad cartridge. I sent it to PL for evaluation.

According to PL, this cartridge was great and wonderful. I asked about the fact that when it was perfect vertical, one channel showed -38db and the other -29. His answer was "it is what it is" and this is very common. Another words, correct azimuth can show wide discrepancy between channels regarding crosstalk.

So, in this case, I could not follow the recommendation by the software as it told you to rotate the shell 45 degrees to have similar crosstalk numbers...

Hi Jazzgene,

sorry, but the software never ever would recommend to twist by 45°.......

Cheers,

Chris

PS: You have mail

Most arms are designed to dissipate and/or transfer vibrational energy so that little is reflected back to the cartridge. The first step in that transfer is the interface between the cartridge and the headshell. Spacers would probably reduce the effectiveness of that transfer. So, once again we are talking about tradeoffs if shims or other spacers are used for azimuth correction.

Thom is correct. Optimizing azimuth for any particular cartridge requires a MUCH finer adjustment than 0.5 degree, at least 10X finer I'd say. I don't believe any set of differential shims you could easily buy would provide the necessary precision, except by dumb luck.

Despair not. As Thom suggested, rather than inserting shims beneath each cartridge screw, try running one skinny shim longitudinally down the center of the cartridge. A ~2mm wide strip of thin tape works well.

Adjusting the mounting screws "rocks" the cartridge L or R as needed, and provides an almost infinitely small range of adjustments. (If your cartridge is really off, use two layers of tape.)

Credit to Wally Malewicz. You can see a photo here. This works.