On my Rega 3 a new ND7 cart has just been fitted. The dealer in order to mantain the arm parallelism and correct VTA,being the ND7 thicker than Exact, had to place a spacer underneath the arm. So counterweight and lid are touching themselves, having not enough clearance, pushing up the cart from the record.
Anyone already had such issue? Taking out the spacer, the VTA wouldn’t be correct, or dealer told me that new Rega counterweight are smaller.
That surprises me, given that Rega always made great claims about vta not being important and their cartridges not needing spacers.
really?
Hi Roberto, I would just take out the spacer for the reasons @bruss gives.
Best, C.
Yes, with their cartridges in particular, but also more widely.
Yes. Read the Rega book from a few years ago. All in there
Something is not right here. Always a benefit of rega carts on rega arms was that they were pretty much plug and play. Just a check of VTF and that was it. Maybe a confirmation of set up with the paper gauge too.
Do we have any measurements of the heights of the 2 rega carts?
Dealer told me that arm tube was not level without, so the spacer was added. I will check myself
Wasn’t the RB300 launched in the 80s? Old tech issue with a new cart?
I’ve seen some discussion on height impact with new cartridges; it was referenced in ear review
Not sure if this was arm lifter or arm that was impacted
I always assumed, and may not be correct, that all rega carts were the same height.
No new ones are taller
I think that Rega’s claim is that VTA is less of a priority than rigidity, and that raisinp the arm pillar end makes VERY little difference to VTA. Iexperimented with a P9 + DV XX-2 Mk 2 + 2mm shim (to corect LEVELLING to an ideal, and with shim resulted in a slight deterioration to the sound. My experience only though.
the-ear review-hardware/rega-nd5-moves-the-mm-goal-posts
Last paragraph
For the avoidance of doubt (and to avoid an unauthorised review link) here’s a quote of the final paragraph of the EAR review by Jason Kennedy:
Taking the picture of these two cartridges revealed that the Nd5 is notably deeper from tip to mounting platform than the Exact, which given that there is no adjustment for VTA on Rega arms is quite surprising. However Rega’s views about VTA (vertical tracking angle) are well documented and boil down to: precise VTA is less important than tonearm rigidity. In other words the difference that correct VTA makes is less critical to the detail retrieving capabilities of a turntable than the elimination of vibration in the arm mounting that can result from ajustable arm height. What Rega does say is that adjustment is required in the cueing platform when changing from Exact to an Nd cartridge, this is done in the factory for new turntables and by a dealer when having a new cartridge fitted.
Ah apols for link
Ah ha. I sped read and mentally mixed up VTA with VTF. All makes sense now.
There are loads of comments on other forums re:spacers, arm lifters etc
I called 2 dealers (well known established in London); one said yes to adjustments and another said no
I called rega direct and they said no.
in the end I got a rigb cartridge instead….
Of course the cueing arm adjustment has nothing to do with vta or vtf.
No shim is required.
Ah. That’ll be it. My last rega cart was an exact on my P25. Always made me laugh that rega called it exact, as I found it anything but. Dull, lifeless and best forgotten. Sounds like the new range has fixed that. Albeit with increased height.