Dumb VTA Question

Excellent post by Jcarr. As usual.:)

"However, as I recently wrote in Stereophile, the
construction of every tonearm that I am aware of (with the
sole exception of the Eminent Technology linear trackers)
guarantees that altering SRA will simultaneously cause the
effective length to change, along with the tracking force.

To make sure that any SRA-induced audible changes are truly
attributable to SRA rather than sundry alignment shifts that
came along for the ride, you must recheck the overhang and
tracking force and "put them back" to what they
were prior to the VTA change.

At the end of the day, you may ponder about the real value
of "VTA on-the-fly" mechanisms (grin).

kind regards, jonathan"

I would just like to add that IMO overhang should be the
last adjustment done after changing the other parameters. We
could argue the order but I think it should be SRA first,
then VTF, and finally Overhang last.

Then there is Azimuth. If you have a linear tracker or a
pivoted tonearm that adjusts Azimuth in the same plane as
the offset angle then adjusting Azimuth should not effect
the other settings much at all. On the other hand most
pivoted arms adjust azimuth at the back of the arm.This
adjustment is not in the same plane as the offset angle.
When this is the case, changing azimuth will effect all of
the other settings (VTF,SRA, and overhang). In this case I
would do it in this order. SRA, Azimuth, VTF, and then
Overhang.

As said above, this needs to be done multiple
times by ear to dial it in.

Sean

Dinster, Baerwald is the best compromise for the records I play. I like to stay as close to that as possible. YMMV.

It is not an issue on my Schroder LT. With this linear tracker I can easily dial alignment in by ear.

Dinster, another way to change SRA is by placing a shim between the cartridge and headshell. Placing the shim behind the cartridge screws will have the same effect as lowering the back of the arm. Of course if you have to lower the back of the cartridge so much that it drags on the record then there is something very wrong.

Using a shim is not an ideal solution but it will at least let you hear if achieving 92 degrees with that cart is a good thing or not.

I find it hard to believe your calculations for overhang change are accurate. They don't jive with my experiments. Could your decimal placement be off?

Peter, that sounds about right with small changes in SRA. With a 1 degree change in SRA the difference will be large enough to worry about.