Electronic stylus force gauge question

Doug,
I very much appreciate your response. If I used too strong a language in my post, please accept my apologies as well.

Btw, I suspected that a sense of hearing so acute must be to a large degree genetic, not learned, even though I'm sure one can be trained and learn to listen for certain things as well. Thank you for sharing it.

Peterayer,
The gauge is set to 0.00, but begins to show a negative reading as the tonearm is half-way down toward it, no matter how gently and carefully I lower it. At which point would you reset it? The platter is definitely level.

Stringreen,
The Delos is designed to perform best at 1.75 g. You can read about it on the Lyra site, but it essentially aligns the signal coils precisely parallel to the magnets during play. That's also what I've found. As far as the Shure, I have two of those and their readings were inconsistent so it was obvious that at least one of them was inaccurate. That was the reason I decided to get an electronic scale.

Slaw,
The gauge does not really fluctuate, and does settle down fine. It really appears to work well and provides consistent measurements. I don't think the negative reading is a defect; I think it's probably the result of the scale being very sensitive. It also looks well made.

I of course listen with my ears, but as I explained above, I should know what VTF I'm actually tracking at. I noticed that weather, prolonged non-use, and sometimes simply inexplicably, the setup gets re-adjusted. An accurate stylus gauge is just a basic necessity in our hobby.

Eddie,
The minus reading displays when the tonearm begins to move, not when the stylus is on the dot, or very close to it. So I think it's highly unlikely that it has anything to do with magnetization, but I suppose stranger things have happened...

Thanks for the input, guys. I will try unplugging and replacing the batteries. I agree with Phil that it's a shame quality digital scales sell for so much. In addition, the design of some of the expensive scales such as Clearaudio (Mapleshade seem to have the same design with a lip for placing the stylus at record level) is not very practical with the Classic platter (and I suspect many other platters) because of the slight "cutout" in the platter for the label. I tried the Clearaudio scale and it was very awkward to use as I had to angle it on the platter to have it stable and perfectly level. That in turn made placing the stylus on the lip quite tricky. $250 is a lot of money for a scale that needs five minutes of setting up to take a measurement.

I think I might have outsmarted the scale! I placed the stylus on the weighing spot and then turned it on. It showed 0.000 grams as I expected, but when I lifted the tonearm, it showed a negative reading of...1.778 grams! I repeated the procedure several times and the reading remained consistent. I then repeated the procedure with the scale turned on before placing the stylus, and despite the negative reading the result was the same so it appears the negative reading does not factor in in the measurement.

I know - I need to get out more often. Thank you everyone for the input and advice. May your Friday night be more exciting than mine :)

It's evident from several recent threads that Actusreus is not yet comfortable with trusting his ears and prefers the security of measurements, even measurements that don't necessarily correlate to optimal sonics. If he believes that every Lyra is so free of sample deviations that precisely 1.75g of downforce is optimal, well, Jonathon Carr himself would tell him otherwise but we all have our own way of enjoying this silly hobby. It certainly won't do any harm to play at that downforce. ;-)

Doug,
You're misinterpreting my posts, or perhaps I'm not expressing myself clearly enough. I don't recall ever stating that I don't trust my ears; what I do criticize, however, is the blank assertion that only adjusting by ear can result in optimal sound in an absolute sense. What you might find optimal might not be optimal for another. Especially since your taste in music is vastly different from many fellow audiophiles'.

I also find your statements about the Delos a bit ridiculous. Even more so since you don't own one. It actually was J. Carr who told me and every other Delos owner that the cartridge performs best at a VTF of 1.75 g, in plain English in the Delos' manual. It was designed that way. In fact, every Delos and Kleos owner seems to uniformly be of the opinion that they do sound best at 1.75 g, even in this thread. So I find your criticism a bit ignorant. And if you trust your ears so much, why do you even have a scale at all? And why use protractors at all? Just slap that bad boy on and adjust by listening.

I'm not going to make apologies or made feel embarrassed because I want to know whether I'm tracking at what one of the most accomplished cartridge designers in the world with a long-known religious attention to and focus on the quality of his product recommends, which happens to sound heavenly to me as well. Unlike you (and frankly most likely 90% of audiophiles out there), I cannot hear the changes in the sound at the level you can. I fully realize that you know way more than I do about analog, but you sometimes come off as rather patronizing, which is unnecessary. Especially regarding equipment you don't own or have no familiarity with.

I will always value your opinion, but perhaps you can consider that not everyone has the gift (or the curse) you and Paul have when responding to honest, even if naive, questions. Many of us just want to set our system up an listen to music, not tweak it for every record.

Stringreen,
Whom are your comments directed at? No one challenged or took issue with your posts. It's puzzling to me why you would choose to post such an antagonizing reply, whomever you're referring to.

As a side note, please re-read my original post. I never asked for advice about tracking my cartridge. I simply asked a specific question about a digital scale. This whole "silly argument" began because some of the responses, I believe starting with yours, moved away from what was asked and began a whole other discussion that now has culminated in these unnecessary diatribes. I know you mean to provide beneficial advice to those who know less than you (and I personally have always valued your opinion), but I think it would serve us all better to simply address the questions asked only, or refrain from posting, rather than pontificate, however accurate it might be in your opinion.

Suteetat
I always have similar but not exactly identical problem with most of my cartridges. If I turn on digital scale on first and let it zero first, as soon as I move my cartridge over the scale, it gave negative reading. However the number usually does not fluctuate wildly. The reading is very much reproducible every time. I assume it was just magnetic interference from cartridge or something along that line. Usually I just move my cartridge above the scale first then turn the scale on and let it zero itself then. This happened with my airtight koetsu dynavetor and Lyra with 2 different scale (same made though) so I thought it was normal.

Suteetat (and others),
Do you have any concerns that the magnetic interference might negatively affect the cartridge long term? Beyond inconsistent readings, the icing on the cake would be to damage a few $K cartridge with a cheap scale while trying to dial in the VTF!

Haha, I hear you! Same here. Consider the question never asked :)

Hey John,
You're absolutely right. In retrospect, I wish I had not written the passage about tracking as closely to 1.75 g as possible. The main impetus behind my original post was the concern about the accuracy and reliability of the scale and measurements, not the obsession with the magic number of 1.75. Little did I know I was about to open a big can of worms...

Al,

Thank you for your plausible hypotheses. Something tells me you're probably right, as usual, if not about both, at least one of them :)

Now the question I have to ask: can any of this be harmful to the cartridge?

Al,

I thank you for the good night's sleep I'm going to get tonight :)