Well Tempered Signature turntable and arm

My first Well Tempered was the Record Player that I bought in about 2000. Very interesting table, and i learned the basics of setting up a WT on it. I moved on from it to a Teres when a remarkable opportunity occurred. The a few years back I came across a Well Tempered Reference locally and I snapped it up.

It is an interesting table, that is awesome in some aspects, and less than exciting to use in others. The arm is relatively easy to adjust, but setting up overhang is a royal pain in the butt. Otherwise all the other techniques for setting up a WT held true for it. One thing about arm set up. I was always conservative on how deep I set the paddle. I would start with the maybe 1/4" of the paddle submerged and then i would gradually lower it till I found the level of stability and dampening I wanted. I ran several cartridges on it and never skewed a cantilever. I ran a Koetsu Urushi Tsuguru, ZYX 4D, Ortofon A90, Audio Technica OC9 III, and Ikeda 9 Kawami on it.

Aside from setting up overhang, I found it irritating that the feet could not be leveled. I also thought the motor and the fact that it had no speed control options to be an irritant. Supposedly LP Gear sold a new belt for them that was the best option, but my WTR always ran a tad fast. I always came across other opinions that the corian base was actually rang more than the MDF stacks in the Classic design. Sure it was pretty as could be for a 1990’s era table, but all that engineered material still rang.

All in all I liked the table. But when it came time to gather my monies and buy a SOTA Cosmos Eclipse I sold the Well Tempered Reference and did not miss it at all.

If the cantilever is bent to the right, seen from the front, you cannot explain it with too high friction in the tonearm.

If it would so, the cantilever should be bent to the other side, to the left side! The grove pulls the needle to the inside of the platter, and if the tonearm doesn’t want to follow, it will be bent to the left.

A bended cantilever to the right should have another problem, maybe a way too low antiscating force, but I can’t explain it in that way.

With normal bearing tonearms you are quite right.

But here we have the armbearing "floating in silicone".

Antiskating is easy to set with the Well Tempered Reference and Signature tonearms at the top. Normally you set it using a special test-record (for example by Ortofon) so that distortion lets say at 80 micrometers is clean on both channels and 90 micrometers distorts "even" on both channels. If the 90 µm distort first on one channel you adjust antiskating so distortion starts on both channels at the same time. 

I used to have even the legendary Orsonic Sideforce Checker (SG1) which I had used and then compared to other test methods.

This special tool allowed me to realize, that not one tonearms antiskating was correctly set up if tested on a vinyl record without grooves! Because the force within a groove is different than without groove on a mirror-like surface.

So I know how to set antiskating and it was done the right way with my
Well Tempered tonearms.

I really liked their sound but they had this devastating effect.

I would say if you use a cartridge with a conical tip such as the Denon DL103 then 500 hours is anyway the time a conical tip is worn.

But special tips such as v.d.Hul, Gyger-1, Line-Contact, Paroc, Shibata, Vital, Micro Ridge etc. last at least 2000 hours. So you want the cantilever and suspension last that long as well.

I have set up hundreds of tonearms in my life and more cartrigdes of course.
So hopefully I know a little bit about it.