Turntable help

gdphoto

Hi, I've dusted off my old Sony PS-454 Turntable and may want to upgrade the cartridge and Needle. I have a very good Sound System and would like something that would improve the sound of my LP's. I'm thinking that the stock set up I have is OK, but there is room for improvement. Do you know of something that would fit the bill? I would also like to upgrade the turntable someday as well and if I get a good cartridge set up I would put it on the new TT.

Also, Are there different setups for straight vs. S shaped tone arms?

Thanks!

Gary

Fongolio

gdphoto wrote: »

Also, Are there different setups for straight vs. S shaped tone arms?

What you need is a cartridge to match your arm's mass. There are heavier and lighter arms in both S and straight configurations. If the arm is heavy you will need a low compliance cartridge. If it's light a high compliance cartridge. What's compliance you ask? Compliance is a number that represents how springy or stiff the suspension is on the stylus of the cartridge. The higher the compliance number the softer the suspension. The number is measuring a distance the stylus will deflect given a fixed amount of force therefor the farther it moves the more compliance it has. Why is this important to know? If you mate a really heavy arm with a high compliance cartridge the stylus will deflect too far and not be able to pick up the subtle nuances in the grooves. The reverse is also true, too low a compliance cartridge with a really light arm and the stylus can't read enough of the information because it's just skimming along the top of the grooves.

So why does arm mass matter when I'm setting the tracking force to 2 grams or less on any cartridge? You'll notice I've used the term mass instead of weight when talking about tonearms. Because of the pivot and counter weight, the end of the arm can have very little weight when measured on a scale, but ,just like objects in space, it still has all of it's mass and that mass still takes force to move up and down. More mass means more force to move up and down and less mass less force. That's why we need to consider arm mass and cartridge compliance when considering a new buy.

Most tables are equipped with medium mass arms and most lower to mid priced cartridges are medium compliance with exceptions of course in both. A lot of older Dual tables had very light arms and were equipped with very high compliance Ortofon cartridges. I have a Thorens TD-150 that has a very light arm and it works very well with an older Audio Technica AT20SLa cartridge that is very high compliance. I'm guessing your table will have a medium mass S style arm. A really nice cartridge for this table would be a Denon DL-160. It's a high output moving coil with medium compliance. Being high output it will still work with a moving magnet phono stage but have a big amount of moving coil magic. Many here on the forum have used them and many still do.

I hope in some way this has made it a little clearer. Enjoy!!!

Kelvin

gdphoto

I know it's been awhile since I started this post, but kids, collage & weddings have kept me busy. Shortly after the above post I bought a nice used Technics SL-1210-MK5. I installed a new Shure M97XE cartridge and stylus. It sounds good, but because of my entertainment center, I have to place the turntable to the left of center which puts the left side of it six inches from the left SDA speaker. I get feed back when I up the volume. When I turn the balance to the right it's goes away. Now before I go doing any surgery to the beautiful wall unit I built, do you think, if I move it so it's 26 inches from the left speaker and about 10 inches higher then it is now that would be far enough to avoid feed back? This position would also place another 3/4in plywood wall between them.

deronb1

Thats still pretty close. I played around with my TT placement and found higher and bisecting the speaker distance as much as possible worked best for me, in my room

gce

I see this is an old post but I read Fongolio's post and have a question. What is considered a low compliance number or a high compliance number...what is the range?

For example an Ortofon Quintet Black the spec's are "Compliance, dynamic, lateral 15 µm/mN". Is that high or low?

mhardy6647

well -- let's see. In the old days, when there was more interest in the nuts and bolts of cartridge design and performance, compliance was measured in units of cm/dyne (i.e., apply a dyne of - lateral - force, and measure the lateral displacement in cm).

The Shure V15 is (was) a cartridge of legendarily high compliance, correlating to very low optimal VTF (on the order of 1 gram) and a need to be matched to low-mass tonearms for "optimum" arm/cartridge/suspension system resonance (generally taken to be ca. 8 to 12 Hz).

Various flavors of the V15 over the years had various compliance ratings. In the 1966 Allied Radio catalog :- ) http://www.alliedcatalogs.com/html/1966-250b/h170.html the compliance of the originalV15 is spec'd at 25 x 10^-6 cm/dyne.

The units of compliance Ortofon spec'd for the cartridge you quote are in units of um (micron) per milliNewton (mN).

1 cm = 10^4 um
1 Newton = 10^-5 dyne -- I looked that one up on Google :-P so...
1milliNewton= 10^-2 dyne

so the conversion factor for the two units is, conveniently, 10^6

thus: 25 x 10^-6 cm/dyne = 25 um/mN (that's handy, eh?)
(someone should check my dimensional arithmetic -- it's still early!)

The Ortofon, at 15 um/mN is a medium compliance cartridge, I'd opine; well-suited to the currently fashionable medium mass arms.

High compliance cartridges are kind of out of style these days -- I could speculate on the reasons, but I won't, for now ;- )

mhardy6647

I got my mN <=> dyne magnitudes mucked up in the above screed; sorry!

gce

Thanks for posting that. Now I need to wrap my head around it and go from there.

mhardy6647

It's reasonably accurate except (and this should've been pretty obvious, if I'd actually read what I typed):

1 dyne = 10^5 Newtons (or 10^2 milliNewtons).

In other words, a dyne is just a teensy weensy bit of force... as befits the teensy-weensie little cantilever & suspension of a phono cartridge ;- )

For the record, 1 Newton (1 N) is the force (or "weight") associated with 1 kg of mass accelerated by earth's gravity (g = 9.8 meters per second^2).

In English units, by the way, a "pound" (as you know) is a measurement of weight. The English unit of mass is called a slug... one slug = 32 pounds (because, in English units, the acceleration due to earth's gravity is 32 feet per second^2).

... or, to look at it the other way around, a 1 pound weight has a mass of 0.03125 slugs.

You needed to know that today, if you didn't already! ;- )

gce

I think I'll just go digital.......j/k LOL

mhardy6647

digital?! -- now you're talkin' about something really complicated!!!
Are you up on the Nyquist-Shannon Sampling theorem?

;- )

gce

mhardy6647

gce wrote: »

One is reminded of the memorable (well, to old guys like me) exchange from Animal House.

[Handed his first joint]
Pinto: I won't go schizo, will I?
Jennings: It's a distinct possibility.

In, fact, from my "of its time" perspective (JHU '80), one would be hard-pressed to find a more enjoyable waste of a few minutes than reading through memorable quotes from Animal House... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077975/quotes

:- )

gdphoto

I figured out what the problem was with what I thought was feed back. I keep an RCA to 1/8 stereo plug plugged into my preamp and coming out to the front for easy plugging into my laptop for when I RIP to CD. When I push it in out of the way it sometimes touches the metal side of my CD player and causes the annoying hum in the left channel I mentioned on 2/8/15. Makes sense, because if just the tip of the plug is touching, then that will only effect one channel. Sometimes it's easy.