I’m having great fun with my Linn Basik LVX tonearm with replacing the Headshell’s with different Cartridges & Styli ?? After having the K9 Cartridge with Vital Styli for many years I changed to the AT95E Audio Technica Styli as this was the way to go at the time !! After moving up through the complete range of green! orange! red ML to the brown Shibata fitted to the K9 cartridge I have now move on the the Linn Adikt with the Gyser 11 styli which is just wonderful for my set up. But now having bought a replacement headshell I now have both headshell’s set up at the same weight & tonearm weight which I can now change over to try all my different styli without causing any problems in 1min . Would anyone have any ideas about working your system like this or find it to cause problems in the long run because after studying this subject for so long I feel as though it’s worth giving it a try instead of damaging expensive styli on older records.
Unless the cartridge and headshell weight are bang on exact to within 0.1g or less it almost certainly isn’t a good idea.
They tracking weight isn’t just for the vinyl. Too heavy will wear it though that weight is probably several grams greater than the upper threshold of recommended tracking weights.
The main issue is the design parameters of the cartridge simply won’t let it perform as designed outside the published tracking range which is typically a narrow 0.4g window.
That said, with a tracking weight scale I still think one can swap a headshell in under 60s and be ready to roll.
Thanks for the reply & I have took all what you said into hand & made sure that I have the same weight of 1.1gr & made sure with my tracking that that was correct which was what I thought before I went ahead with & also I was very lucky that the azimouth was correct so I hope this goes along to help others who might not be so sure when playing around with fine tuning. Thanks again.
Sorry, But I meant to say that the overall weight of the Headshell/Cartridge/Styli before adding weight was a difference of 1.1gram which made them both the same weight at 15.7gram, so the set up for both is now the same with everything working on the same set up measurement & weight.
Also I’m new to this forum thing so if there is anything you could help me with I would be very grateful to you for helping me out.
The headshell may not have the same centre of gravity even with the same weight unless it’s the same headshell model. The tracking force is most accurately measured on the stylus point.
The good news is that a digital tracking force guage is pretty cheap. You can spend a fortune but even a £20 from Amazon will be extremely accurate.
It’s very fast to use and you may find you prefer one cartridge slightly lighter and another slightly heavier anyway. So if you have two with identical recommended tracking weight between 1.8 and 2.2g there is no reason to assume you would like them both at the same force.
Oh yes the headshells are identical as I was able to find a company who supplies Linn products & also I expland what I was thinking of doing & they supplied with one .
It’s imperative to re-check VTF (and bias) each time you swap a cartridge or cartridge + head shell. This is because while you can get carts and head shell to weigh the same, the weight may not be in the same area and thus will cause a difference in the VTF. Also different carts or even different styli on the same cart will usually track optimally at different VTF settings.
The good news is that a decent scale should make setting the VTF relatively easy each time.
Point taken & by using my digital styli gauge I have the weights set correct before going ahead & playing my turntable to make sure I was correct. But thank you for giving me that information which also goes a long way to helping other people wanting to play around with their systems without making big mistakes which can happen.
Yes, provided each cart/headshell combination is a known and you know the optimum settings for each then there should be no issues swapping from one to the other. It sounds like you are on top of it.