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Tone Arm Mass

Hello world. So here's my issue. (Well, one of them.) I have a Well Tempered Classic table with the carbon fiber arm, and a shelter 901 cartridge. I spent much time setting the table up, and was not satisfied. Lowing VTA, raising VTA… aligning and realigning … The lower mids and bass just were just weak.

Then I read about a thing called "compliance."

The Shelter is low compliance, which means that it should have a more massive arm – at least more massive than the WT. I bought a 3gm headshell weight, and low and behold, more bass, more life – I finally felt I was hearing what the 901 was capable of.

Thing is, I think if the arm had still more mass, it would improve the sound. Specifically, make the lower octaves more pronounced. More bass. What say you all?

How would I go about adding mass to my existing tone arm (buying a new one, or new table is unfortunately out of the question at this point.)

The rest of my system:

CAT SL Mark III preamp (100 ohm load on the 901.)
Quicksilver v4s
Vandy 2CE Sig
PS 300
Richard Gray 1200

Thanks for your time!
rada

Showing 1 response by nsgarch

nsgarch's avatar
nsgarch
2,524 posts
 
I second http://www.cartridgedb.com use the interactive tonearm vs. compliance chart.

100 ohm loading may be a bit low for a 901. (Bloaty/mushy bass? Highs don't sparkle?) It has an impedance of 20 ohms. Using the 25x rule-of-thumb = a ballpark optimum load of 500 ohms (although I usually find that a bit high with most phono stages, and certainly one as good as a CAT! I'd start at 300 ohm and work my way up until I started losing bass response and then back off 50 ohms or so. (Cartridge db user reports suggest 470 ohms BTW)

The compliance/effective mass may be a problem as David suggests but more damping won't help. That TA has a rather low effective mass for such a low-compliance cartridge which also doesn't weigh much itself. It's not that far off though. You need to increase the cartridge weight by a couple of grams, and you'll be right in there. I'd recommend using (heavy, yet non-magnetic)) brass mounting hardware (that'll add at least 1.5 gm). That, along with proper loading should be enough, I think.
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