VTA and Subsequent SRA of Grado reference Platinum 1 cartridge


Recently installed Reference Platinum 1 cartridge on my Traveler V2 tone arm and discovered that the VTA had to be adjusted about 2 degrees lower towards the rear in order to get some air and high frequencies from the system.  This is a bit unusual coming from a Nagaoka MP 300 that seemed to be at its best at nearly level tone arm or VTA.  Is this unusual or typical for the grado reference platinum or is something else at play?  Tracking force is set to 1.8 grams and was checked and adjusted as I lowered the arm.

Your experiences and knowledge would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely and thanks for your thoughts,

Sam
samuelb

Showing 1 response by donst100

Hi Sam,
I have this cartridge and until recently I didn't like it. Had a hard time getting an adequate high end out of it. I played around with VTA and tracking force. Raising the rear of the tonearm helped some. I finally spent some time getting the azimuth perfect and the sound, all of a sudden, really came to life. If you can adjust the azimuth on your table, make sure the front of the cartridge is perfectly parallel to the record. Also, setting the tracking force a bit higher (1.8g) seemed to help. 

The soundstage really opened up, image became much more three-dimensional. It's almost a bit too bright now, which is a problem that I definitely wasn't having before. Also, I probably have at least 100 hours on it at this point.