How To Control The Eager Beaver


I’m sure that there is a better term for this but my Googling didn’t reveal one.  Analog is a secondary source for me, generally confined to albums that never made it to digital.  So I got one of these 45 year old favorites from eBay and it has a common issue that I’ve had with other turntables besides my current one in the past.

  When I depress the cueing for the tonearm it skips the first few measures .  I have to manually and slowly lower the tonearm and even then it still does this about half the time.  This only happens with certain LPs.  Is it record warping?

 

  I had my dealer check the cartridge alignment a few weeks ago.

 

  Again I’ve tried Googling this and I just haven’t been able to come up with much except improper cartridge alignment and record warping.

  Just wondering what people in this Forum, who are an amazing collection of knowledge, think

mahler123

I don’t have any problems like that when listening to Qobuz’s higher quality than vinyl music on my mid-fi system (NA C700, Monitor Audio Silver floorstanders).

Wow!!!  great job of diagnostics on this issue APHs. That your knowledge on such an analog subject is great is not surprising. It’s that the use of digital streaming is so prevalent in this community I thought maybe analog use was nearing its death. 

@larryi excessive antiskating would pull the stylus OUTWARD and not inward as your answer indicates. 
 

Furthermore, all records have a raised lip and that’s something a properly adjusted tt/tonearm should handle with ease. Thus, dropping the stylus further in is only a hopeful workaround, not addressing the cause itself. 
 

@elliottbnewcombjr I agree with you.

OP, I suggest you check and adjust the tracking force as needed, and dial-up the antiskate a bit and see if this fixes the issue. 

I wondered about insufficient anti-skate, but for skating force to pull the stylus inwards, it has to be in a groove. I have had experiences where the stylus drops, bounces and jumps inwards - all without spending any time in a groove. So I suspect the raised rim on the disc is responsible for bouncing a quickly dropping stylus towards the spindle. Solution is to lower the stylus more slowly, and/or be a bit more accurate with placement just before the first track. If this is a fully automatic TT then that might be difficult.