Needle Care and Questions

[psemeraro]

Just upgraded to a VM95ML and it's properly weighted, aligned, and overall sounds pretty great! The only issue I'm trying to figure out at the moment is when I first drop the needle at the start of the record. It almost always jarringly goes from the edge into the first song, causing a loud skip. Is this something that adjusting the anti-skating would fix or is there something else going on here?

Hi, the needle should never jump from the edge into the groove. If you brought your TT to me for diagnosis, here are the steps I would take. Maybe some of this could be helpful to you.

1) Verify there is NO PLAY or looseness, or friction, stiffness or sticking in any of the tonearm bearings. Repair or replace as appropriate.
2) Visual inspection of the stylus under loupe and "finger test" of the suspension. If stylus rake angle or azimuth looks "off" then repair or replace as necessary. If stylus suspension movement is inconsistent or catches anywhere repair or replace as necessary
3) With stylus installed in cartridge, visual inspection with loupe that V-magnets are perfectly centered in the pole pieces gap in all directions. Repair or replace as necessary (* nearly all of the VM 95 styli I've purchased had stylus azimuth slightly off but its also easy to correct with a loupe and toothpick if you're handy with tiny things. I use the toothpick to rotate the v-magnets so they are perfectly aligned in the pole gap. That magnet alignment is directly responsible for the channel balance being correct or not.)
4) With stylus/cartridge/headshell installed in turntable, set tracking at 2 grams, verify headshell azimuth with acrylic block, verify cartridge azimuth with acrylic block, and verify with loupe stylus visible azimuth with acrylic block. (That's a lot of words but really only takes a few seconds)
5) With tracking force at 2 grams and anti-skate a zero, and turntable unplugged, set stylus at beginning of record and verify sra to be around 92 degrees. It doesn't have to be exact but should be tilting just slightly forward. Just slightly. Adjust/tweak/fiddle as necessary until that is correct.
6) Using dead wax method (it's fast, accurate enough and cost $0) set anti-skate so stylus very slowly (and smoothly!) moves to center of record.

Once that is done and playback sounds even and good, THEN I would get out the protractor and properly align the cartridge. From there enjoy your records until it's time to replace the stylus, which should be around 500 hours with a ML. Others may argue with that time but microscope inspections bear that out as a reasonable time for ML tips and at the end off the day, styli are cheap and records are expensive.

Pat

 

[NewsFedora]

Umm... a lot of what you just said is way beyond my area of expertise. Basically I've been trying to do a balancing act with the anti-skate where if it's set too low it "slams" into the start of a record's side but if I increase the anti-skate so it's a smoother progression, then I notice the tonearm shake more near the end of a side and it results in the skips I've been hearing on some (but not all) records. I have yet to find a good happy medium between the two.

Maybe I'll look up some videos about the azimuth or aligning the v-magnets to see if that might make a difference.

 

[psemeraro]

Umm... a lot of what you just said is way beyond my area of expertise. Basically I've been trying to do a balancing act with the anti-skate where if it's set too low it "slams" into the start of a record's side but if I increase the anti-skate so it's a smoother progression, then I notice the tonearm shake more near the end of a side and it results in the skips I've been hearing on some (but not all) records. I have yet to find a good happy medium between the two.

Maybe I'll look up some videos about the azimuth or aligning the v-magnets to see if that might make a difference.

An acrylic azimuth block cost about $5 and is a great investment. But anything small and square with very straight edges will work. I also forgot to mention make sure the turntable is level.

You simply put the acrylic azimuth block (or whatever you have) midpoint on the record (the record is our starting point) then set the stylus down on the record behind it and from the front, look over the azimuth block at the headshell. The headshell should be exactly parallel to the azimuth block. I'm talking exact exact. I look at mine thru the 20x loupe to get a very accurate view of the headshell, and the cartridge and the stylus point. We want the headshell and cartridge to be "dead on" parallel to the record surface and from there we want the stylus pointing perfectly straight down into the groove.

What you're ultimately trying to achieve is the stylus pointing perfectly straight down into the groove and leaning forward JUST a bit. If it's leaning sideways even a small amount it can cause the needle to slide towards the spindle more than it should when you first set it down.

Are you able to take a zoomed photo of the stylus sitting on a record about midpoint with the turntable unplugged? What you're describing really sounds like azimuth assuming you've set the anti-skating as I described above.

My interest in azimuth is rooted in setting up turntables for professional use. It's important that the cartridge is well-behaved and stable in back-cuing, dealing with occasional warped records, occasionally scratched records, (does the stylus play through the scratch and stay "on track" or does it skip a few grooves) etc. Turntables in a professional environment need to just work, and be predictable. Setting azimuth correctly goes a long way towards a reliable drama-free turntable that does its job and gets the music to the audience. "Working records" as I like to call them are not always perfect but a properly set up turntable (Typically Technics in a professional environment) will play through nearly anything and still sound good, the audience having no idea if the record is in great condition or a hot mess.

Pat