We've talked about this a number of times, and it appears that many seasoned audiophiles enjoy having highly accurate gauge in order to re-set the cartridge to a previously determined optimal tracking force. Reasons for this range from swapping cartridges and/or armtubes periodically to making VTA changes in arms that can have their tracking force thrown out inadvertantly in the handling process.
Then, there are folks like me (and possibly you) who don't have these needs and rely on fine tuning by ear with a gauge like the Shure just to get us in the ball park to start that process. I follow Lloyd Walker's turntable fine tuning advice for iterative adjustments of VTA and VTF to do my fine tuning. Then I adjust VTA for each different record weight, leaving VTF fixed. (The small VTA adjustments between 150, 180 and 200 gram LPs are very noticeable and absolutely necessary for my ear and my system, but they don't interact enough with VTF to warrant changing the VTF for each of these subsequent VTA teakings.)
Sdcambell, my experience has been that for setting up a tonearm/cartridge an iterative dialing process of changing VTF, then changing VTA, then changing VTF, is needed because of the interaction (just as Lloyd recommends). Thereafter, as noted above, I don't bother changing VTF when I adjust VTA between LPs because the difference truly is miniscule to unnoticeable at that point.
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Then, there are folks like me (and possibly you) who don't have these needs and rely on fine tuning by ear with a gauge like the Shure just to get us in the ball park to start that process. I follow Lloyd Walker's turntable fine tuning advice for iterative adjustments of VTA and VTF to do my fine tuning. Then I adjust VTA for each different record weight, leaving VTF fixed. (The small VTA adjustments between 150, 180 and 200 gram LPs are very noticeable and absolutely necessary for my ear and my system, but they don't interact enough with VTF to warrant changing the VTF for each of these subsequent VTA teakings.)
Sdcambell, my experience has been that for setting up a tonearm/cartridge an iterative dialing process of changing VTF, then changing VTA, then changing VTF, is needed because of the interaction (just as Lloyd recommends). Thereafter, as noted above, I don't bother changing VTF when I adjust VTA between LPs because the difference truly is miniscule to unnoticeable at that point.
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