What is your to earl’s Maximum Distortion %?


[Header meant to be: “What is your TONEARM’S maximum distortion”. I have been reading many comments about Audiogon randomly (or not) putting in typos, and it seems this may be the case!]


I’ve been playing around with different cartridge mounting, as a Grace arm the plinth of my Lenco cannot be mounted at the recommended pivot-to-spindle distance of 222mm (closest it can get is 225mm).


My best figures in theory seem to be:
Max. Tracking Error: 3.51 degrees
Max. Distortion: 1.21 %
Average RMS Distortion: 0.73 %

This is with: P-t-s 225mm; overhang 11mm; offset angle 19 degrees.

What are your figures for your setup?

fusian

Earl called. He said his views on tonearm alignment have been distorted.

It’s a Grace 707 - the headshell is not removable, unfortunately (in this case).

I would be looking for whether there are any head shell options that allow the cart to move further away… assuming it has a detachable head shell.
There are on-line calculators that give you the pivot to stylus distance

https://alignmentprotractor.com/arc-protractor-generator

And the just plug in 225mm to get the the distance, and compare that to the 222mm distance
222mm: 239.296
225mm: 242.082

My Korf ceramic HS on the old arm, looks like it just has about an 1/8” of room to move it further out.

I would certainly start there if it was my arm, and then worry about azimuth and Zenith and SRA.