It starts with the position of the cartridge in the headshell. A millimetre forward, turned a fraction to the left, then back again a little. Then you put the template on, peer at the lines and start all over again because the cantilever isn’t quite parallel. It’s not the cartridge housing that matters, but ultimately the stylus and cantilever themselves. And those aren’t always easy to assess.
It’s typically the sort of task where, after twenty minutes, you think it’s perfect, only to discover five minutes later that you were looking at it at an angle.
And yet all that fiddling is worth it.
A cartridge that isn’t properly aligned might sound quite decent at first. Especially at the start of a record. But as you get towards the inner grooves, the difference often becomes more apparent. Vocals take on a sharp edge, the calm disappears and a busy passage suddenly becomes just that bit more unsettling. That’s exactly the annoying thing: you then find yourself wondering whether it’s down to the record, the cartridge, the phono stage or perhaps even the recording itself.
When in fact the cartridge is simply half a millimetre out of position.
Then there’s the tracking force. Another aspect you can have great fun tinkering with. The manufacturer specifies, for example, 1.8 to 2.2 grams, and somewhere along the line the idea takes hold that 1.8 grams will probably sound more refined. Less pressure, so more air, right?
Not necessarily.
Setting it too lightly can actually result in less control and more distortion. That’s why I prefer to start around the middle of the recommended range and listen my way from there. A digital stylus pressure gauge is actually indispensable here. Relying on the scale on the counterweight is all well and good, but if you’re going to the trouble, you might as well do it properly.
And we’re not nearly done yet.
The height of the tonearm – VTA – can also make quite a difference. A very small change can make a system sound just a little more open, fuller or smoother. That makes it tempting to use VTA as a sort of tone control. Yet I try to avoid doing that. First, set it up as technically correctly as possible; only then do I fine-tune by ear.
Azimuth is perhaps even trickier. Viewed from the front, you want the stylus to sit as straight as possible in the groove. Even a minimal deviation can affect channel separation and imaging. Particularly with a transparent system, you’ll hear this not just as the left or right channel being louder, but above all as a stereo image that just doesn’t quite come into its own.
And finally, anti-skating. There are whole philosophies surrounding this too. Exactly the same as the stylus pressure, slightly less, by ear, using a test record… You could spend an entire evening on it.
Perhaps, in the end, that’s exactly what makes analogue so much fun.
You plug in a streamer and it just works. With a record player, you sometimes have to spend an hour on your knees, fetch a torch, take three measurements and ask yourself why on earth you ever got into this in the first place.
But then you put that record on one more time.
The vocals suddenly sit more calmly in the centre. The cymbals sound cleaner. The bass gains more definition and the stereo image widens without becoming more pronounced.
Not an earth-shattering difference.
But just enough to put on one more record.
And after that, you’ll probably end up adjusting the stylus pressure to 0.05 grams anyway.
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