Graham tonearm tweaking

George_a,

If you changed the fluid level on a Graham 2.2 for every record you could only spin 1 or 2 records a day. It is a potentially messy process that must be done with considerable patience and care. If you only have one pair of hands it may take 5-10 minutes per change, and if you're using the (reportedly superior) new blue fluid it takes hours to settle in thoroughly, as sirspeedy has explained.

I admire your spirit and dedication though. You're even more insane than I am, and that takes some effort!

Once you find the right fluid level there's no reason to change it until you change cartridges. Each cartridge requires its own unique level. Even the three similarly compliant ZYX cartridges we listened to on Cello's Graham performed best when damping fluid was fine tuned for the individual cartridge.

I don't doubt sirspeedy's statement, based on much longer damping experiments than mine, that these adjustments interact to some degree. Certainly VTF and VTA do. To "perfectly" adjust one parameter you need to have the other two optimized as well. But in the end damping should be much more stable over time than VTF, and VTF is much more stable from record to record than VTA.

To my ears, adjusting damping in the Graham emphasized or de-emphasized different parts of the frequency spectrum, probably because different damping amounts attenuated different resonance frequencies within the arm/cartridge system. The sonic changes from adjusting VTA or VTF are very different from that, and from each other too for that matter. For this reason it seems right to me to make these three adjustments as follows:

Damping
Adjust for the cartridge. Once you find the right amount it shouldn't need further adjustment unless the cartridge behavior changes (eg, with break in) or you switch cartridges. Silicone is a very stable material. Its behavior should be little affected by the temperature and humidity swings in most listening rooms.

VTF
Adjust for the cartridge and then for the atmospheric conditions that effect compliance and tracing ability. The elastomers that make up cartridge suspensions behave far more chaotically than silicone when subjected to temperature and humidity changes. A materials scientist will groan in despair if you ask for predictions (trust me, I have and he did). Therefore, changes in weather require frequent changes to VTF but have much less affect on damping fluid.

VTA (SRA, please!)
Adjust for the record if you like. As you said, every record was cut at its own particular angle. Emulating that angle during playback brings out the best from that record. Because the large proportion of SRA adjustments involve keeping the arm at the same angle relative to the (changing) vinyl, the net effect on VTF is minimal. I do change SRA for every record. I change VTF much less often, typically a little more at the start of a session and perhaps a little less after several sides have warmed the cartridge up.

First, many thanks to sirspeedy for the typing upgrade. 15 paragraphs in two posts, wow! Seriously, your always valuable content is much easier to read. Go ahead, blush!

Remote control VTA, wouldn't that be nifty? It really doesn't take much time on a TriPlanar or JMW though. Once you know the right setting for a record you can dial it in while the TT is spinning up. Real time loss is virtually zero. It's not so good on a Graham 2.2 because the arm height adjustment lacks adequate resolution.

Back to topic. It's not surprising that damping acts differently on a Graham vs. your friend's AirTangent (or my TriPlanar). Their damping devices are so different mechanically that you wouldn't expect similar sonic effects.

I'm not surprised your AirTangent friend prefers no damping. We don't use it on the TriPlanar either. The damping troughs on these arms are well away from the pivot point, which means the greatest effect of damping is to present resistance to lateral arm movement in response to cantilever deflections. This resistance must feed back to the cartridge and affect the way the cantilever acts in the suspension. The sonic effects seem detrimental IME and apparently in your friend's also.

OTOH, the damping on a Graham 2.2, Basis Vector and other unipivots is concentrated at the pivot point. Depending on the size of the bearing surfaces, it has a negligible effect on lateral arm motion. What it does is dampen arm and bearing resonances at certain frequencies. The damping on an AirTangent or TriPlanar does not dampen resonances very much because the fluid is not in contact with the arm very much, nor with the bearing at all.

With an Airy 3 on Cello's Graham 2.2, a little too much damping started to kill the HF's. Backing it off by even a pinhead made the highs zippy and immediately killed some of the bass. We could not find a happy medium with that combination in his (strongly dynamic) system (in a bright room).

With an Airy 2 the sweet zone for damping was sufficiently broad that we had room to tune it, a pinhead or two this way or that, without feeling like we were giving up anything. We achieved full dynamics with no loss of HF control, full bass without bloat. This was a happier setup, again possibly due the overall characteristics of his system and room.

I recently went to two high line audio homes in NYC.One a rich hobbyist with too much money.Never keeping anything long enough to learn how to set it up properly.300,000.00 worth of,literally, the worst sound I've ever heard.

I've met one of that type, and the one I met is also greedy and refuses to accept responsibility for his own (often poor) choices. He's also a manipulative back-stabber. Larry has recently been given the "opportunity" to meet him, an opportunity he should miss IMO.

Doug,as for your comments about the "lack of resolution" in the Graham's VTA adjustment,compared to the Wheaton.I owned a Wheaton for 4 years.You do realize the Graham's scale is set for much smaller adjustments(as in more precise).

FWIW, here's what I remember.

TriPlanar VII
One revolution = .7mm in height change
40 point dial = .0175mm per point
The dial is large enough to accurately interpolate 5 positions per point, so .0035mm per interpolation

Graham 2.2 (numbers from memory, please correct me if wrong)
One revolution = 1.0mm in height change
24 point dial = .041666mm per division
The dial is smaller but one can accurately interpolate 2
positions per point, so .0208333mmm per interpolation

Without interpolations
.041666/.0175 = 2.38

With interpolations
.0208333/.0035 = 5.95

Therefore, the TriPlanar VII's height adjustment has at least 2.38x the resolution of the Graham 2.2's, and nearly 6x the resolution if you give the TriPlanar credit for its larger, easier-to-read scale. My ears and Paul's subjectively confirm this, the Graham dial requires noticeably smaller movements to hit the sweet spot.

ZYX UNIverse
I can only echo Larry's enthusiasm, though I've only heard it directly against the cartridges on his list. Larry, didn't you hear others in that audio club meet you travelled to last month?

Of the four serious audiophiles who've heard mine two have already bought one, the third is saving his pennies, the fourth is crying because he may never be able to afford one.

The three buyers include Larry and a mutual friend who has the quickest ears and lowest tolerance for colored components of anyone I know. He listened to our UNIverse for 5 or 6 hours and commented that it did nothing wrong. That didn't sound like much, but his friend almost choked on his coffee. In 15 years this guy has apparently never heard a component for more than a few minutes without noticing a flaw. Three weeks later, after hearing a UNIverse in another system, he broke down and bought one. He's mentioned it once or twice on VA. Search for UNIverse! or UNIverse!! and you'll find him. Pretty amusing, since he's the most sceptical audiophile I've met.

His friend is the one saving his pennies. He's a broadcast engineer and custom builds or mods amps and preamps, some of the best, most neutral sounding gear I've heard at any price.

These two guys are the polar opposite of your typical, brand-happy, star-struck audiophile. They know what they hear and they understand why they hear it and how to make it better. They both fell in love with the UNIverse.

I'll be posting a review in a week or so. Short version: close your eyes and you'll see live musicians in your listening room.

Sirspeedy,
I certainly wasn't trying to argue, but I wasn't offering an opinion either. Unlike many things in audio, thread pitch is easily measured. 0.7mm per turn is more resolving than 1.0mm per turn. Opinion really doesn't enter into it. (Now I'm arguing!)

I agree about the "slop" in the TriPlanar's VTA threads of course. To use that adjustment consistently one must bring the tower up to the desired position by at least 1/4 turn or so. Doing this allows the weight of the arm to take up the slop, which is easy to feel. Tighter threads would be better. Perhaps that's what you meant when you said the Graham's VTA adjustment was more resolving.

Many thanks again for posting your breakthrough results. Damping the Graham effectively is so critical that every owner owes you big time.

Jeff_ss,
Are you going to post your document? I'm actually working on something similar for the TriPlanar. There are a number of things a user needs to know that aren't in the TriPlanar manual, just as a good explanation of damping is not provided in the Graham manual.

Raul,
I can't imagine why you'd object, but I do in fact listen with closed eyes at live concerts. All the time. I'd better stop doing that or I'll never see you coming!

...in order for the Wheaton to fit my arm's mounting area,and to fascilitate the "DOWNWARD" pitch of my arm,with respect to my Transfiguration Temper V's excessive vta "backslope" I needed a spacer between the cartridge and the headshell.You could imagine how pissed off I was at my dealer for not realizing this.Especially when I asked him to check this out.

Now that IS annoying.

I forget where you're located, except I know it's not FL (yet). If it's near central CT let me know. If you or your friends are nearby I could certainly bring my UNIverse over for a listening session some day. We can both close our eyes and neither of us need get heated up about anything!

Sirspeedy,
I've been mugged once and burglarized once, but I doubt either scenario is likely while I'm carrying the holy cartridge into Yoda's cave! If I feel like spending a day in NYC it would be easy enough to swing by, mount it up and have a listen. Of course he or you are also welcome to visit, though hearing a cartridge in a strange sytem is not quite so useful of course.

I know one UNIverse owner who's also owned a Myabi and an XV-1S. He says the UNIverse is decidedly superior to both, particularly as regards neutrality. His only concern after a month of ownership is bass weight, but he admits he'll accept slightly tubby bass to feel greater impact. We won't. We prefer the textures and dynamics of individual instruments to any dynamics laid over the music by a component. The UNIverse's dynamics are strictly those of the music, never of the cartridge. IME it is transcendant in this respect. I've heard more full-bodied cartridges, the Denon 103 for example, but that fuller body is invariably the sound of the cartrige itself. I don't want to listen to a cartridge. I want to listen to musicians.

For a slightly darker, near Arthur Salvatore-an view on your last question: the mainstream press relies on its advertisers for survival. They may publish honest reviews, but perhaps honesty does not require 100% disclosure. It merely requires not falsifying anything one does choose to discuss.

They discuss the Graham's superb ergononics, world-leading ease and accuracy of setup, superb adjustability and excellent build quality. Damping? Mucking around for two weeks with messy blue goop? That's not exactly a selling point, so maybe we won't spend too much time on that.

Or, as Larry found with the Graham rep, they simply don't know and it didn't occur to them to find out. I had a similar experience with my last car purchase, I all but demonstrated the car for the salesman. Enthusiast forums like this one give everyone access to the collective insights of people with great passion for a product. People like you, who often have far more knowledge to share. Thanks to the internet we no longer need magazines to tell us what to buy or hear.

Sonically,once I got over being on HOLY ground,similar to the sound I had heard that month,while viewing the HAGLER/Sugar Ray Leonard fight at an area disco.

ROTFLMAO. That's quite a sound stage. So HP's system had plenty of punch?

I think he feels he would not be able to swing the 5 LARGE,should he like it.

In that case, he probably shouldn't listen to it. I have a friend who made that mistake. He's skipping lunches to get one. That's a lot of lunches.

HMMM, indeed! Very suspicious! There could be an infringement suit here. Did you record that call? Might be worth some bucks.

In Larry's defense, the UNIverse is very difficult to describe. If you check reviews of other ZYX models you'll see similar remarks. I said something like that in my Airy 2/3 review and so did Art Dudley in his. Invisibility is the ZYX house characteristic, but it's pretty tough to wrap words around it.

The further up the ZYX line you go the more invisible they get, naturally. By the time you reach the UNIverse all words seem futile. The only other component I've heard that disappears so readily and thoroughly is the equally indescribable Schroeder Reference. How do you describe the sound of nothing?