good arm, lets the cart sound come thru. now and then you need to adjust the bearings. test their tightness by lightly torquing the arm. any play should be immediately noticeable. small screwdrivers arent hard to find but small tools to span the holes in the bearing retainer might prove to be more of a problem. small angled needlenose pliers or tweezers might work. peruse the Time-Motion Tool catalog----timemotin.com there are some in there thqat might work. paying somone to do htis is ok but you can acxquirei the skill easily enough. just adj them for free motion without play. both planes can be adj. the imaging, and character extracted from each cart tells me that this arm is revealing enough to want it back. i only wish it had a universal headshell.. i like to change carts, oc9, grace f9e, krell, ortofon, stanton 881s, at150ml, etc. it is actually a medium mass arm, MCs are ok as long as they arent gruesomely heavy. sumiko used to supply a dialable vta adj, good luck finding one of those, wish id gotten one when they still imported the arm.
Grace Tone Arms
Further from my Ariston turntable query, I would be grateful if anybody who knew anything about Grace tone arms could advise me on decent cartridges that would match. The arm itself appears very thin- is this a good or a bad thing?, as most other good tone arms I have seen seem much thicker