Phasemation cart on Technics

You can play with the VTA by setting the Cart' Body Level to the LP, or a Little Toe Down / Heel Down.

It is not uncommon to see where Cart' users have selected a Heel Down alignment as their preference.

This can be achieved in a controlled incremental measure by putting playing cards under the Wand until the Wand is levelled / Cart' Bottom Face Levelled. Adding / Removing Cards will then change the angle to the LP, p, when the    

@pindac  thank you. I will revisit this. I guess I wonder if the tonearm/cartridge compliance might also have something to do with it?

It’s only 5 hours old. It feels like you wanna send your baby for a facelift already. Give it at least 50 hours to break in. Also, the new suspension is usually a bit stiffer, lower in compliance, than spec. For a few of those break in hours, you might try setting VTF near its upper limit.

By the way, you seem to be conflating weight with compliance. At least the numbers you quote look like compliance data. But yes, for a low compliance cartridge, like yours seems to be, you want a tonearm with high ish effective mass ( not “weight”). Effective mass reflects the distribution of the mass of the tonearm, from counterweight to headshell/cartridge.

Thanks @lewm  and you are correct about my mistake. And yes, its dumb of me to be asking questions after a handful of hours but I guess I wonder if its the suspension or the tonearm (which is not a great fit).

I'll keep on keeping on.

As long as the tone arm effective mass and the cartridge compliance are not wildly mismatched, I personally tend not to worry about that issue too much. For one thing, we never can know the actual compliance of a given sample of the cartridge. All we know is what the manufacturer tells us is the compliance of an average sample. For another thing, we often are guessing at the effective mass of the tone arm. If you think your tone arm effective mass is too low, that is easily remedied by using a heavier headshell of which there are many good ones on the market. 

@lewm  great point and I guess I have never really thought about it.

@gochurchgo I’m not a cartridge guru, but I am using the Phasemation PP-500 on a Technics 1210G (stock arm) with a Phasemation CS-1200 headshell (13.7g) and Oyaide BR12 mat (5mm). I’m definitely enjoying what I’m hearing...

Also, I believe the low compliance you are quoting above was measured at 100Hz; Anamighty Sound measures the PP-500 at 14x10-6 at 10Hz, so medium compliance. The Phasemation/Technics stock arm combo is fairly common in Japan.

@oceanandmountains  same setup the other than the mat. Are you using the aux weight?

@gochurchgo Yeah, sorry, aux weight too. The rest of the system consists of a Leben EL84 amp and Leben tube phono through Klipsch Forte IV speakers.

@oceanandmountains  very nice! I’m running Heresy IV’s and am considering the Leben. 
 

anyway, I have removed both weights and completely redid the arm/angle/tracking force etc. see if maybe I butter fingered something.

@gochurchgo As @lewm mentioned, the sound will change as the cartridge breaks in. Hopefully you like where you end up. Best of luck!

@gochurchgo I have overlooked the newness of your Cart' and do agree there is a period of Time Required to acclimatise the Damping/Tension Wire to the real world.

The Card Trick remains a decent methodology to fine tune VTA for another occasion.