Rega P25 Setup Question


Hi,

I feel kinda stupid asking this, but here goes:

I just got a rega p25. It has an expressimo counterweight on it. My old technics table had both a weight adjustment and an 'anti-skating' adjustment. The manual says there are adjustments for both of these on the rega as well, but I only see the one dial on the tonearm.

When I put the counter weight all the way forward, towards the tonearm base, and install my cartridge, the tonearm balances when I set the dial to 1. My cartridge recommends 1.8-2.2 grams of weight, so I put the dial at 3, just after where a big dot is on the dial.

My question is: Is this setup "correct" ... I'd expected an anti-skate control, but is this all built in to the one dial, or am I missing something? Is the dial for just the weight, or both ?

Any knowledge or suggestions much appreciated.
mrgoby

Showing 3 responses by mrgoby

Okay, I'm getting confused now. My understanding was vertical tracking force was equal to weight... I thought anti-skating was a horizontal (or diagonal ?) force applied by a spring.

Section 3 in the manual mentions the "tracking force adjustment knob", then the Anti-Skating (bias) adjustment knob... and that I should set it to the same number as the "Tracking Force"... this leads me to believe there are two knobs that should be set to the same value... such as a "VTF" adjuster and a Bias, or antiskate adjuster... I see now that these are the same knob, or at least that there is only one, anti-skate knob on the turntable.

My problem I think, as far as getting even more confused, as Mofimadness points out, was that the heavy weight from expressimo is too heavy and putting it all the way forward was still not enough to balance my cartridge weight. I've put the stock rega weight on and it does in fact balance now and I have some room to move forward still... So, I'll get a scale and measure the 2.2g.

Does this sound reasonable ?

Thanks :)
Okay, I'm starting to see clearly now. Thankyou Mofimadness, for I now see this anti-skating slider and all is made clear.

Just to get this straight, the knob/dial on the side of the tonearm is for VTF, though, correct ? So basically the way I had it setup wouldn't have damaged my cartridge, due to lots of anti-skate force being applied ?

Out of curiousity, why is it recommended not to use the spring loaded VTF, for better sound, or to prevent stylus damage, or both ?

I know the expressimo is supposed to cut down on gyroscopic resonance, or some such thing. Would it be worth it to add more weight to the stylus end and use the expressimo, or is there any disadvantage to doing such a thing ?

Thanks a lot for the help.