In Search Of !!!
lash5 -- Mon, 10/03/2005 - 20:17
In Search Of !!!
I'm looking for someone to either make a house call, or for me to come to their place for some instructions on how to tweak my turntable, & tone arm. I'm having difficulties in getting the right set-up for operational use at home.
I own a 70 lb. Black Granite Base~ Oracle Delphi Mark V ( Anniversary Edition) Turntable, along with a $2,500.00 Graham Engineering 1.5 tone-arm. Attached to this is a tone arm is a $ 1,100.00 ZYX (Yatra) Cartridge/ (MC) needle.
The Tone arm wants to keep coming back to the arm rest area. I can't seem to hold the anti-skating down where I need it, + the tracking force. Hmmm !!!! All of this is feeding into an integrated Caver Tuner CT-26-V, & a Jolida 9-A phono stage Tube amp.
Anyone care to take a good look at this dilemma ???
Thanks,
Mike G. Lashinsky
602 Pittsburgh Street
Scottdale, Pennsylvania ~ U.S.A.
15683-1651
( 727 ) 887 - 5870
lash5 [at] zoominternet [dot] net
Dear AVguide Forum participant,
I’ve taken the liberty of forwarding your inquiry to one of Absolute Multimedia’s resident Graham tonearm users, Jim Hannon.
Jim won’t be able to do a house call, but he may have insights that will help.
One very important point: Are you certain your Oracle turntable is precisely leveled? I pose this question because, in my experience, unipivot tonearms don’t normally rotate back to the arm rest position when anti-skating is turned off—except in cases where the table platform itself is out of level. ‘Just an initial thought.
Best,
Chris Martens
Publisher/Editor, AVguide.com & AVguide Monthly
Absolute Multimedia Inc.
4544 S. Lamar Blvd., Building G300
Austin, TX 78745
(512) 891-7774 Office
Chris Martens
Editor, Avguide.com/Playback/The Perfect Vision
Hi!
It seems we got it all figured out today (My son & I). We took the
anti-skate the whole way off the Graham 1.5 Tonearm. Set the tracking
force to Two (2) Grams, then set the switches on the Jolida JD-9A Phono
stage to (MC) to the high impedence/ Dynamic Coil/ Crystal Head out-put
levels, & the also set the cartridge setting at 100 Ohms.
Then we reversed the settings in the back of the Carver CT 26-V
intergrated Pre-amp. I unplugged the Phono stage jacks, & put them into
the Auxilary settings instead of the Phono stage, I guess what was
happening was that it was getting a double feed back, & distorting the
whole sound stage???
We figured out that placing the preamp jacks coming from the Jolida
JD-9A to the Carver CT-26-V Tuner/Preamp into an AUXILLARY slot, was
that the RIAA correction is being applied "2" times instead on the one
time at the tube amp. This resulted in the loss of signal........ Whew
!!!
This is worse than rocket science to me....
Thanks for all your suggestions & help. I'm now back to spinning that
good "ole" vinyl.
Mike Lashinsky
lash5 [at] zoominternet [dot] net
Hi Mike,
Glad to hear that you got your Graham set-up sorted out.
Chris is quite right about unipivots like the Graham. The turntable needs to be completely level (they're almost as fussy as linear trackers in this respect). I change the level of the table by using "business cards" under the spiked feet of my VPI Aries table. This lets me make minute changes in level.
Bob Graham suggests that several other factors besides the "levelness" of the table can affect anti-skate, including the stylus shape and tracking force, the characteristics of the vinyl, the position of the arm over the record, and the modulation level of the record being played.
In most cases, I would first concentrate on turntable level (it should not tilt to one side or the other) and play with tracking force.
The documentation for the Graham 1.5 arm offers this advice:
"Be sure the loop on the anti-skate thread is hooked over the top groove in the stainless lever of the ball-bearing bias assembly. The anti-skate weight can be slid to the desired detent on the calibrated shaft. . .DO NOT attempt to tighten the set screw with a screwdriver. Each detent is equal to 1/2 gram and covers the range from 1 to 3 grams. The innermost detent is 1 gram; sliding the bias weight outwards increases the anti-skate force by 1/2 gram per detent. For intermediate settings, it is correct to leave the weight between the detents."
Hope this helps.
Best,
Jim
Thanks Jim,
I shall save this for future references.
As i said before, It (WAS) working real good yesterday, now today it's giving me fits again. The tone arm wants to just take off across the record platter, & the vinyl L.P.
Now it wants to run towards the center / spindle Hmmm ??? It seems as if it's tracking force is not holding the cartridge down to the playing surface ??
I'm not so sure i like this uni-pivot set-up. There's too much messing around, & not enough of spnning records at this point in time...
Mike.
P.S.
Any other info that you can grab up & share with me, will certainly be appreciated
In re-reading the above, I keep coming back to the question of whether the turntable is level. I don't own the Graham arm in question, but I have a JMW 9" arm on my VPI Scoutmaster Signature turntable, which is a unipivot arm.
Using a small carpenter's level, place the level on the turntable's plinth, not the platter. Make sure that you level front to back as well as left to right.
I use a Arcici Airhead II under my turntable, leveling it by adjusting the air pressure in the 3 small innertubes. I do not use the turntable's legs at all to level the turntable.
I hope that this might help you.
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