Looking For Protractor For Well Tempered Reference Tone Arm

yogiboy

I submit that any differences in distortion due to sub-optimum arcs and deviations from the two null points and where they are located (those peaks in distortion) are masked several times over by distortion imposed by my tubed gear and my loudspeakers.

If you say the distortion of your tubed gear and loudspeakers mask the distortion of a misaligned phono cartridge, I have no reason to doubt you. But that doesn't mean that distortion from the misaligned cartridge would be insignificant in all systems.

This is an interesting take from another thread on the importance of overhang adjustment!

Vinyl heresy-overhang induced distortion is not that important

I have learned and am of the opinion that the quality of the drive unit, the quality of the tonearm, the quality of the cartridge and phono stage and compatibility/setting of all these things (other than setting overhang) and the setting of proper VTF, VTA, SRA, and azimuth are far more important than worrying about how much arc-induced and overhang- induced (the two are related) distortion one has. I learned this the hard way. I will not go into details but please trust me-I am talking about my new ~15K of turntable components for the deck itself and excluding cartridge and phono stage. I have experimented with simply slamming a cartridge all the way forward in the headshell, placing the cartridge mid-way along the headshell slots, and slammed all the way back, each time re-setting VTF, VTA, SRA, and azimuth. I would defy anyone to pick out the differences. I have 30K of tube separates, a Manley Steelhead, and DeVore O/93’s. I submit that any differences in distortion due to sub-optimum arcs and deviations from the two null points and where they are located (those peaks in distortion) are masked several times over by distortion imposed by my tubed gear and my loudspeakers. To believe that your electronics and loudspeakers have less distortion than arc-induced distortion is unrealistic. I have heard startling dynamics, soundstaging, and detail with all three set-ups. It is outright fun to listen to and far preferable to my very good digital rig with all three set-ups.
My point is that getting perfect alignment is often, not always, like putting lipstick on a pig, I think back on my days on owning a VPI Classic and then a VPI Prime and my having Yip of Mint Protractors fashion custom-made protractors for each of these decks and my many hours of sitting all bent over with eye to jewelers loop staring down horizontal twist among parallax channels and getting overhang on the exact spots of two grids and yet never hearing anything close to the level of sound I get now. Same cartridges, same phono stage, only my turntable/arm combination has changed. I kept thinking the answer had to be in perfect alignment when it was clearly everything else but.
Thoughts? I am sure I will get all kinds of flack. But for those that do tell me I am nuts, try my experiment sometime with a top-tier deck/arm combination and report back.

Why does it matter? Well since the head shell offset is at a fixed position, then overhang has to be correct to have the offset be correct also. Get overhang length wrong, and the other half is wrong. 

Also I have an Ikeda 9 Kawami cartridge on this table, and not only is it a bastard to set up, its very unforgiving on tracking issues. Get offset wrong and it does weird things like create a high frequency squeak on passages where you have tight modulated grooves on the record. Then add to the fact you can't see the damned diamond when setting up, and there is no way to adjust offset cause there is no cantilever to site on the grid. So in a way that makes the lack of adjustment on the WTR arm a benefit, cause you don't have to beat yourself up over this adjustment. 

So this afternoon I printed out an arc protractor at 233mm. With this table you have to loosen a nut in the bottom of the table that holds a post that the arm slips over and tightens to. You rotate the post and it changes the overhang length. It works well, but its a very inconvenient system. I got overhang set as well as I can, and am listening to vinyl now. What the Ikeda does well is phenomenal. Its ability to deal with surface noise is not excellent, and vinyl with any flaws will be very noticeable. But when it gets to perform at the top of its game this is a fantastic cartridge. I still prefer the SOTA Cosmos/SME Transfiguration Proteus, but this is very very good and I can enjoy listening to it all night. 

if I recall correctly from my one experience mounting a cartridge in a well tempered reference tone arm, like you say there are holes in the head shell but not slots and in addition to that the pivot point is fixed. You can’t adjust it there either. So you are really stuck with the factory dimensions. Which in effect is kind of freeing. Why bother to measure?.

If you measure 230, and Wally says 233, that's pretty close, what's the problem? Even assuming perfection, its a pivoted arm. Its only tracking right at two points anyway. All the rest of the time its off, and most of the time by more than the difference 3mm makes. Check the geometry, I bet its two, three times as much. Maybe more. So why sweat it?

Push comes to shove, you slot the hole by 3mm. This will make next to no performance loss yet it will allow you to try both and listen which is really all that matters anyway, how it sounds.

Analog is funny. On the one hand it rewards meticulous setup. But on the other hand you never really know what's best until you try and compare. While on the third hand the one thing you can be sure of is you will never hear anything until you try something. So why not just go for it?