iopscri wrote "Cartridge alignment can be difficult because the entire arm tube has to
be adjusted to set alignment, but that is easy enough if you know what
to do and have patience. The real problem is most people (and techs)
did not know or care enough to carefully adjust the bearings ! Simple,
surprising, and true."
An interesting post with enough fact woven in with the misinformation to lull the unsuspecting, but please forgive me I mean no disrespect. You cannot know what you do not know. I grew up in a nearby suburb of Boston and had many occasions to meet and get to know Mr. Vilchur. In fact I was and am a big fan of his, my reservations about his turntable notwithstanding. Sometime around 1967 or 68 a couple of friends and I made the treck to 24 Thorndike Street, Cambridge, MA, to meet with Mr. Vilchur precisely to go over the proper setup of a recently purchased AR turntable. We also brought along a Weathers Townsend, a less expensive competitor that was tracking better using an Empire cartridge. Mr. Vilchur started out with great confidence and showed us how to carefully adjust the bearings as suggested above. But the AR arm could not be adjusted to perform satisfactorily. Mr. Vilchur blamed the cartridge and substituted first a Grado and then a Pickering, but the Weathers easily outperformed the tracking performance of the AR no matter what was tried. As I said in my previous post, the AR arm had too much friction, and even with careful setup it was never a good arm. I owned one, sold several, setup and worked on hundreds more over a decade or more. I know what I am talking about as I was personally trained by Mr. Vilchur himself on how to get the most out of the AR turntable. It did lead to better designs. My sister still has a TD150. I owned a TD125 for many years, but it had an SME arm and I still own an older VPI also with an SME arm. In summation the AR turntable should be relegated to the history books and museums. Save your precious vinyl.
An interesting post with enough fact woven in with the misinformation to lull the unsuspecting, but please forgive me I mean no disrespect. You cannot know what you do not know. I grew up in a nearby suburb of Boston and had many occasions to meet and get to know Mr. Vilchur. In fact I was and am a big fan of his, my reservations about his turntable notwithstanding. Sometime around 1967 or 68 a couple of friends and I made the treck to 24 Thorndike Street, Cambridge, MA, to meet with Mr. Vilchur precisely to go over the proper setup of a recently purchased AR turntable. We also brought along a Weathers Townsend, a less expensive competitor that was tracking better using an Empire cartridge. Mr. Vilchur started out with great confidence and showed us how to carefully adjust the bearings as suggested above. But the AR arm could not be adjusted to perform satisfactorily. Mr. Vilchur blamed the cartridge and substituted first a Grado and then a Pickering, but the Weathers easily outperformed the tracking performance of the AR no matter what was tried. As I said in my previous post, the AR arm had too much friction, and even with careful setup it was never a good arm. I owned one, sold several, setup and worked on hundreds more over a decade or more. I know what I am talking about as I was personally trained by Mr. Vilchur himself on how to get the most out of the AR turntable. It did lead to better designs. My sister still has a TD150. I owned a TD125 for many years, but it had an SME arm and I still own an older VPI also with an SME arm. In summation the AR turntable should be relegated to the history books and museums. Save your precious vinyl.