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Rega planar 8 : Tracking force and Anti-skate settings

Hi,

I set my Planar 8/Apheta 3 to what I found to be sweet spot of exactly 1.81 gr of vertical tracking force. I measured it with a very accurate and calibrated 5gr scale.
I set anti skating according to what gave me the best sonic result and the reading (see attached picture) seems to correlate to the 1.81 gr tracking force.
Sound wise everything is perfect. The only issue I have is when the Apheta stylus reaches a deep crack. In this case the tonearm would jump and land 15 seconds prior to the point on the record where it jumped from. So sound wise settings are at the best spot for me but when the stylus reaches a crack it seems as if there is not enough weight on the stylus and as if tracking force pulls the tonearm towards the beginning of the record.
The problem occurs on records that were properly cleaned and sound completely quiet.
I never had such problem with my planar 3 on these points on my records .

triskadecaphobic

Showing 5 responses by triskadecaphobic

triskadecaphobic OP
82 posts
 

jcoehler & tubegb,

You are right ! setting anti skating to 50-60% of the VTF resolved 90% of the stylus jumps and also improved the sound significantly. Especially the sound stage.
I guess the rest pf the 10% are related to dirt or scratches or is it that the unique prolonged apheta 3 stylus is more sensitive to scratches ? 

triskadecaphobic OP
82 posts
 

How about this ?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/403230790826

triskadecaphobic OP
82 posts
 

Setting the Tracking force is very easy. I found the sweet spot to be 1.80 gr. 1.81 is a bit less refined and so is 1.79.
Setting the anti skate is a bit harder. Yes. Setting anti skating to 50-60% of the VTF is way better that 100% of VTF but the nuances are harder to detect as the weight of each side differs in various recordings. Is there a reference record that makes it easier to adjust anti-skating ?

triskadecaphobic OP
82 posts
 

"Have you tried setting the antiskate to zero, playing a typical LP, and then gradually increasing antiskate from zero until your ears tell you there is no distortion in the right channel"

I went ahead and followed your advice. I found that 0.5 gave the best result. I now have way better sound stage and accuracy than I had at 0.9 (which was much better than the 1.8 suggested by the manual). Thank you so much for the excellent tip :-)

triskadecaphobic OP
82 posts
 

The question is though why doesn't Rega recommend this 0.5 anti skate value or a value close to that when it's obvious that a value similar to VTF as they recommend  produces poor sound ? The sweet spot of 0.5 is so far from their recommendation that I did not dare trying it...

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