What angle should I set the VTA on my VPI turntable?

The big soundstange that LP was recorded on will reveal magic in a system ;-) Tweak a bit then settle in, adjusting it for every LP is a drag….

Two degrees is not screw it. Two degrees is a freak show. Horror. Two degrees and you might as well have bought a CloseNPlay.

No you are dead wrong about the stylus being perpendicular. But forget all that. Once you have the arm tube parallel everything from here on in is by ear anyway. From here on in all you think about is what you are hearing, and which way to make your next microscopically small adjustment.

Try and understand, there are details in the record groove the finest squiggles of which are only about as big as a large organic molecule. Your fancy expensive stylus is precision cut with a special geometric profile designed precisely to trace such tiny squiggles. You fail to make this one essential adjustment you throw all that time and effort and money away. VTA is easily and by far the most important of all adjustments that can be made. It is only thanks to the magic of vinyl that it sounds so good even with crude nowhere near perfect VTA. Learn to get it dialed in just right and you will be richly rewarded.

Here’s how you do it. Starting off you are either too high or too low, don’t know which. Play any record. Really doesn’t matter but nice to use one you know well. If your arm is too high the sound will be very fast, articulate and detailed, but relatively lacking in body and fullness. Turn the dial no more than a few (3 to 5) of the smallest marks and listen again.

If you went the right direction you will have lost almost no detail but gained some body and weight. This is good. This means you are going in the right direction. Keep making small adjustments like this, one after another, for as long as the sound continues to improve.

At some point, you don’t know where, instead of gaining body and weight you will gain bloat and lose detail, especially top end detail. At this point you have gone too far. Dial it back. But only dial it back by about half your last move. Now you are close. Now you are fine-tuning. This is an iterative process, splitting the difference until there is no difference left to split. This is why they put all those tiny little marks on there, see? No way on Earth you can see the angle change. But you can easily hear it. Or learn to hear it.

Or if not, no sweat. Whole point is to get the sound you like. Lots of guys are happy with close enough. You paid a lot of money for what you have, but it is your money. If you are happy, great.

If what makes you happy is incredibly awesome vinyl playback, well then that is why they put those marks on there- so you can do this with all your records, or as many as you really care about anyway. It is just not that hard.

Your first one is always the hardest. Might take you all of both sides. Might take you more than one record. But once done you will find they are all very, very close to this same level. Also you get real good at hearing what is going on. This means adjusting from record to record goes a lot faster. It can be done in the time it takes to play one side, only getting up and adjusting a couple times. Read the number off the dial, write it down on the record sleeve, you are done. Next time you can dial it back precisely where it was, fast and simple as reset the dial.

Sounds like a lot of work and that puts a lot of guys off. But, how many hours, weeks, months of working and saving did it take to get the thing in the first place? Ever wonder why it is people pay hundreds of dollars for some guy to come tune their table and say it was well worth it? Ever wonder what it was they did that was so magical? This is it. 

This article might be of interest to you: http://www.tnt-audio.com/sorgenti/vta_e.html

With full knowledge that it’s a controversial subject, I personally set SRA (being the more important angle to be concerned about) to about 92°, then adjust as per the suggestions that noromance mentioned. When either looking at VTA or SRA, know that a few degrees either way is not critical, after all, you aren’t going to reset your VTA each time you go from a 120g to 180g record.

Ok, ... so I just set the tonearm to be 100% parallel to the platter.  Then I closed my eyes and started to adjust the VTA up and down.  There were subtle changes in the sound as the folks above described. 

So I kept adjusting the VTA up and down until I found what seemed to be the sweet spot.  The playback had good detail and the bass was taunt.  I then re-checked the VTA with my bubble-level.  Surprise, surprise.  The arm was almost parallel to the platter with the pivot side very slightly raised.  Go figure.  I guess I just like sonic swill.  ;)         

No it is just the previously mentioned vinyl magic. Also, probably due mostly to stylus profile, this varies from cartridge to cartridge. My Benz Glider and Ruby really rewarded being fine tuned for each record. The Koetsu does reward being dialed in, but once that is done doesn't show nearly as much difference between records. Although to be honest it is really more a case of it sounds so doggone good I lose interest in tweaking and just want to sit there and enjoy the music it is making.