In trying to mount a vdH Colibri on my Triplanar, I encountered a novel problem; the cartridge is too wide to fit between the folded-down edges of the headshell. Until now, I had never in 15 years of happy ownership ever noticed that the headshell had those edges. Does Triplanar make a shim so that the cartridge can clear the edges of the headshell? I imagine this problem could arise with any wide-body cartridge, like an Allaerts, for another example. What have others done to cope with this problem? In all other respects, the Colibri should be a good match for the Triplanar. |
JCarr, And I responded to your post by stating that I did not think the Triplanar headshell had any "edges" that could inhibit the choice of cartridge. I was looking for that post in order to eat crow. You were absolutely correct. I never noticed the problem until I tried to mount this Colibri. I found an aluminum piece that Herb Papier gave me for simulating the mounting hole to stylus tip distance of a phono cartridge. If I remove the pin he used to emulate a stylus tip and grind on the aluminum horizontal piece a little, it will work for what I need; it about exactly fills the inset between the edges of the headshell. I don't know why the headshell is designed as it is, but probably for strength, so the headshell cannot be bent up or down in the vertical plane. |
Poor Tri, he is headed for a new version of "normal". Congrats to him and the Mrs, in any case.
Ralph I fervently hope you are wrong. I got obsessed with setting up my Lenco in slate, so I have not yet tried to mount the Colibri on the Triplanar using the insert that Herb gave me. Ergo, I don't yet know whether the space between the mounting holes is other than 0.5 inches. If it is, why on earth would vdH do such a thing, and how can I ever use the Colibri in this and 99% of other headshells that are set up for the standard mounting distance? I do notice that there are two pairs of mounting holes in tandem on the Colibri. I thought this was to allow maximum adjustability of pivot to stylus distance, but maybe the two pairs of holes are for alternative headshells. I will soon find out. |
Nandric, I think we get a total of 4 counter-weights, as you indicate. One is the major one that goes up against the pivot. Then there are three additional supplemental counterweights of increasing thickness and weight. I guess we've got the weights straightened out, now.
Interestingly, contrary to Doug's recommendation I found that my Koetsu Urushi sounded distorted in (I think) the right channel, when I applied virtually no anti-skate (bare lever with no weight installed still would give a tiny amount of anti-skate). I had to use the regular brass anti-skate weight, albeit at a very low setting, to make the Koetsu happy. Today I mounted a Colibri on the Triplanar and forgot to re-install the anti-skate weight, yet the Colibri seems quite happy without it. So this phenomenon is cartridge dependent, which kind of surprises me. I would have thought that the skate force is independent of the cartridge type/brand/design/mechanism. |
Dear Nandric, As Ralph implied, anti-skate is a bugaboo of pivoted tonearms with fixed-angle head shells. This notion of using micro-amounts or none at all is Doug's idea based on his listening. Moreover, the tiny o-rings he uses really are not hard to find in the US, and I cannot imagine the same is not true in Europe, unless you guys don't have hardware stores or access to the internet. If manufacturers had to account for all the crazy things we do with or to their products, there would be no sleep for them. Perhaps it is better that we are the ones who lie awake. After all, Tri just got married, and he has better things to do at night. As I mentioned, if you insist on brass, it could easily be done by a competent machinist. |
Nandric, I take it that you would LIKE to have an extra bias or anti-skate weight suitable for applying a very small amount of bias or anti-skate force. Any competent machinist could make that for you, it seems to me, using the original "normal" size brass weight as a template. I guess you want this weight because you are unable to obtain suitable O-rings to do Doug's trick. You could also buy some tiny O-rings via the internet. For another reason, I recently bought some from a company called "All O-rings". You might Google it. McMaster Carr, a hardware supplier based in the US, may also carry O-rings. They sell just about anything else under the sun. |
Dear Ralph (Atma), What cartridge are you using that requires no AS compensation? I know that Doug uses the ZYX Universe.
Nandric, I am very sorry you had to pay so much for your Triplanar. However, as you yourself noted, most of the money did not go to Tri; it went to all those middle-men you mentioned. But I would add in your defense that even $4000 is still a ton of money to most of people who are not obsessed with this bizarre hobby. What interests me is that it now seems that you have been convinced that the single AS weight that comes with the Triplanar is too heavy for quite some time. What drove you to that conclusion, and when? What cartridge are you using with it that seems to dislike AS? Or is it just that you want to try the minimal to no AS approach espoused by Doug?
I don't know whether I am smart or not, because if I did think the AS weight was impossibly heavy, I might indeed clamp it in a vise and go at it with a hacksaw. After I ruined it THEN I would probably first call Tri for a replacement and then call up a competent machinist, which I am not. |
Rumors that I am a "smart gay" are exaggerated.
Nandric, if you re-read what you wrote and what Dan-ed just wrote, you will see, I hope, that there is no way that Tri could accommodate, or indeed anticipate, all the neurotic needs of us audiophiles as regards the AS weight. I hope you eventually find happiness in that regard. Because of the fixed-angle headshell with respect to the pivot, there will always be at least some skating force with any cartridge. So I start with the idea that some amount of AS makes sense. That's why Herb put his AS device on the tonearm in the first place. Perhaps, to those who choose to remove it, the apparatus itself imparts some sonic signature that is more objectionable than the effect of no AS, where skating force is very low. Using the Urushi and the Colibri in my system, I prefer not to live without some AS compensaton. |
Now that all Triplanar-users are present and accounted for, does anyone know whether Tri can upgrade a 9-inch arm to a 12-incher? Normally, this would not tempt me, but it is not possible without some serious inconvenience to mount the 9-inch version on an SP10. Thus conversion of mine to 12 inch length would be tempting. (Probably should just call Tri.) |
Can anyone tell me why the damping trough should be such a negative as claimed? Do you think it is the damping per se or is it resonances set up by the physical presence of the trough and paddle? In that regard, have you all checked that the screws securing the trough were tight, in the process of deciding to remove it entirely? By the way, between Leroy Nieman and Rubens, who would want the former? An unfortunate analogy. How about Rubens v Pollack or v a great French Impressionist? Nieman is trite.
I am going to try it, because now that I am also listening to a Dynavector DV505, I notice that the Dyna is more dynamic sounding than the TP. |
Thanks, Doug. I did not mean to sound snotty about Nieman, but I guess I did.
I knew Herb Papier for his last 15 years or so. He was a very careful listener, and he did not do anything to his tonearm that he himself did not try out in his own system, which was a pretty good one (Sound Lab A1, Rowland 7 amp and his top preamp, Basis Debut turntable). Since I assume Herb felt the damping trough was a positive addition to his tonearm and that this judgement was based on his own trial and error in his own system, I have been reluctant to believe that one would be better off without the trough entirely. But you make a good point; I need to try it. I am now prompted to do so after being blown off my feet by the dynamics of the DV505 tonearm compared to my TP.
PS. I don't know whether the trough alters the resonance of the tonearm so much as it may sink some of the energy at resonance, which was meant to be a good thing. Perhaps it is not. |
I kind of agree with paperw8. If the damping trough is securely fastened, then it is in effect a part of the overall mass of the tonearm. The totality of the tonearm almost certainly has a resonant frequency, so removing the damping trough could only alter that frequency, as the act of removing the trough has altered the mass of the tonearm. Since the damping trough is such a small fraction of the overall mass of the tonearm, one would expect that its effect on the resonant frequency is small. Maybe it goes up a few Hz because the mass has been slightly reduced. However, if the damping trough were loose and could therefore resonate independently, then removing it would only be a good thing, because by itself the trough would resonate at a high-ish frequency. The frequently reported improvement in sound related to removing the trough could also be due to the fact that the arm may sound better without any damping applied. If you're not going to use damping fluid, you may as well remove the trough. Then there is also the "Emporer's new clothes" effect, mentioned by Pw8.
As regards that added way of fine adjusting VTF in the Ultimate version, isn't it interesting that the rear end of the arm has a threaded hole, even on very old arms like mine? Seems maybe Herb Papier was thinking about a threaded weight 20 years ago. |
Salectric,
I think the lift per se is a damped piston-type device. Perhaps your grub screw, that fixes the height of the lift in relation to the arm tube, which is becoming loose. I've never messed with mine in nearly 20 years, and no problems. |
I think what happened with this thread was that Doug fell in love with the Talea, understandably, and he was the driving force here. Plus, there are only so many accoutrements that one can remove from the Triplanar before one is left with a bag of parts and no tonearm.
Ikitch, What is the problem with metal to metal contact, in your opinion? Especially where you are talking about metal screws in threaded metal holes? If a part of a tonearm is held in place by metal screws, as is done on the Triplanar, it may actually create issues with energy dissipation if the screws are isolated from the body of the tonearm via plumber's tape. This is highly theoretical and probably a very minor effect, but still....
If the major issue is screws becoming loose over time, I would suggest "Loctite". With Loctite, at least there would still be metal/metal contact where that might be doing some good re dissipating energy put into the tonearm by the cartridge body. I have never tried it, so YMMV. |
1kitch, We are neighbors; I live in Bethesda, on the West side near the river. I take your point that sometimes isolating screws with plumber's tape might be beneficial, sometimes not. I am in awe of you if you can handle the tiny pieces of p.t. needed to wrap any of the tiny screws on a Triplanar. I can barely wrap plumbing pipes with it. |
Thanks, Doug. I was feeling unappreciated due to not being credited for the loctite idea. (Did you know that autocorrect wanted to change "loctite" into "lactate"? Is there some cosmic significance to that?) We have brass doorknobs in our house, held in place by tiny setscrews that were forever coming loose until I finally started coating the threads with loctite ("lactate" again). Now my wife no longer gets stuck in the basement, which she used to find to be very upsetting for some inexplicable reason.
Just to say that my brief audition of the Talea II at my neighbor's house leads me to believe you guys may be correct; the Talea is at least a bit better. I can draw some conclusions because my neighbor uses my old Sound Lab speakers and drives them with an Atma-sphere amplifier. Thus I am familiar with the "sound" of the downstream equipment. The wild card is his ZYX UNIverse cartridge, with which I was not previously familiar and which is obviously superb. Are you (Doug) still infatuated with the UNI, or have you moved on? |
Dear Rottenclam, If I understand you correctly, you are saying that the pivot rotates in the horizontal plane, however slightly, even when the set screw is tightened down. Is that so? If it is, then get the thing fixed! You should not have to put up with that. I have owned mine since the early 90s, and I never experience that issue. Most likely, Tri can take care of that problem easily. |
I think Nandric is talking about the anti-skate weight, which he calls the "bias weight". Did you other guys really get three different anti-skate weights? I sure didn't. Nandric, please correct me if I'm wrong. |
Hold the phone, Doug. In order to make the Colibri mount-able on my Triplanar, I had to use an alu insert between the cartridge and the headshell. The insert, after I machined it to a minimum mass, weighs almost 3g. Then because of the insert, I had to use extra-long screws, which probably adds yet another gram or so to the mass at the very end of the tonearm, where it maximally affects effective mass. So the gross weight of the Colibri plus insert plus screws is probably not in the "light" class. So may be more comparable to the Urushi. VTF for Urushi in my system is typically 2g, for Colibri, 1.5g. However, I do take your point that cartridge mass and VTF, among many other things, will affect skating force. After I wrote what I wrote yesterday, I came to that realization independently; my first statement was incorrect. Thank you for saying so. These are the things that I dwell upon just before sleep sets in. I am much smarter then.
But then too, last night I listened to the Colibri WITH the brass anti-skate weight installed about one-third of the distance down the lever, from the elbow. I do believe it sounds (even) better with this small (by my standards) amount of anti-skating. The jury is still out on this; I have to do more listening. It could be that the Colibri is just waking up from long storage. But tracking seemed better, etc. I will try the O-ring trick. |
Nandric, You were correct to abandon the use of a groove-less disc to set AS. I just do it by ear. It was very obvious that the Urushi was in need of AS after a short listen without it, since I knew well how the Urushi sounded with AS. Without it, there was obvious distortion in the R channel and the L side of the "soundstage" or "image" fell apart. With the Colibri, the issue is still unsettled. However, given Doug's (correct) reasoning, it would not be surprising that it also "needs" a little AS, because I have increased the effective mass and the weight of the cartridge and related parts. I am also using 1.5g VTF (the top of the vdH recommended range). I usually use 2.0g with the Urushi. My quick listen both ways suggests that the Colibri needs some AS compensation. |
Dear Nandric, There would be no problem here either if I were gay. My one-line comment was an allusion to a one-liner written by the great American humorist Mark Twain, probably 100 years ago. A newspaper had erroneously reported that Twain had died. In response, he wrote, "Rumors of my death are exaggerated." Although I am not a great American humorist, I was only trying to be funny. |
Dan_ed, Are you a dealer or a manufacturer? Just trying to understand the genesis of your pique.
Swampwalker, That neighbor to whom you refer owns my old pair of Sound Lab U2s. He since had them upgraded to "PX" status at substantial additional expense. I am also his official local hand-holder, whenever his audio system has a hiccup. This is why I felt qualified to make a judgement that his system sounded great via Talea/UNIverse; I have prior listening experience. AND I still own Sound Lab speakers and Atma-sphere amplifiers, which are sublime, Dan-ed. Sorry for you that you cannot appreciate them. Maybe you need an MP1 preamp to dig fully the OTL circlotron paradigm. Nevertheless, I have not given up my Triplanar and don't foresee doing that. There may be a UNIverse in my future, however. (Sorry for the partially OT comment.) |
