Professional Turntable Setup ( Chicago area NW suburbs )

Nobody's set up is so good someone can't find a way to make it better. Especially if that someone has had a hundred or more different situations to learn from first. This is after all an area where sometimes simply moving one lead a few inches further from another one can make a difference. Like the man said, even cartridge fastener torque matters.

But then in that case, my Show Me side says, the answer will be the ear, not the torque wrench. Mikey Fremer, instructed to trust the torque wrench and not his lyin' eyes crushed a cartridge when it turned out the wrench was bad. 

Real curious to know when he gets done with your tables how it went- what he did - and how it sounds.

Yes of course I am confident. Just not in the way you seem to think. Like the guy who tapped on a plain old aluminum foil ball till it looks like a ball bearing there’s always the chance someone’s gone and done it crazy better than I ever thought possible. When I said I would pay to see it, with pleasure, that was not my way of saying no way, that’s my way of saying I would pay to see it, with pleasure!

Just because you get what you call "3D palpable sound" does not mean that you have achieved your vinyl rig’s true potential. Like I said, you may be damned close to perfect, but the difference between close and perfect is huge IMHO.

Well, its not "what you call". If that were the case I’d be an arrogant fool. Its what everyone who has sat and listened has called it. Its what even the most jaded audiophile I ever met called, "Swimming in it." Its what other audiophiles wives have said, "I could listen to this all night!" Audiophiles themselves, it turns out, are their own worst enemies. Their wives on the other hand....

The last part though, totally agree. Which is why I am so serious about I would pay to see it.

You know how you sometimes read about the type of guys who painstakingly tweak VTA for every record? I am that guy. Did it for years. In no time flat got so good its very rare a record came along I couldn’t set while playing the first side. Wrote it down on the sleeve.

So when I read about how great it is this guy sets SRA, which probably sounds just unbelievably impressive to a lot of guys I think, yeah, okay, what else? And keep looking for something I haven’t done. And, with a very few exceptions, coming up empty. Not that those few exceptions might not be what makes all the difference. In a world where raising cables up off the floor with telephone pole insulators makes a big difference anything is possible.

Possible. Might.

What I still have not heard though and still very much am interested in hearing is from someone like me who has been building and tweaking and thoroughly understands and has done everything he can and then has this guy come over and even that guy is impressed. Instead all I’ve seen is expensive systems. I don’t care about the expensive systems. Or how impressed the expensive system owners are. I care about extensive skills. And how impressed the extensively skilled are.

Unlike you I actually am doubting. Well my grandmother, she was born in Missouri. The Show Me state.

My first arm was the Graham 2.0. For those who don't know, the Graham is designed with a removable arm wand and comes with a Graham-designed machined aluminum and acrylic alignment jig. The acrylic part is scribed with marks for overhang and tracking angle. With arm wand off and the cartridge mounted and the jig attached and the acrylic part flipped over you can use a magnifying glass to align the stylus to incredible precision. I mean like human hair precision.

The Graham also being uni-pivot and with its side weights has all kinds of azimuth adjustment. 

VTF and VTA (SRA, I say to-may-to, you say to-mah-to) are fine-tunable by ear.

When I moved the same cartridge over to the completely different setup Origin Live Conqueror I heard all the same superbly palpable 3D imaging I'd been used to with the Graham, and then some. In other words, I have to believe it was set up at least as good, in spite of the lack of the jig and azimuth adjustability.

Not that this will probably ever matter, me being way outside the service area in Redmond, WA. And not like I doubt in any way shape or form the guys who have had this done believe they got their money's worth. But the one thing I asked about that hasn't been answered here or anywhere else I've seen is, how good was your table set up to begin with?

Are there any guys who like me totally know what they're doing, totally know their rig was set up really, really good to begin with, who then were astounded to hear it brought to a whole new level?

Because that I would pay to see. With pleasure.

So how was it set up before? What did he change?