Sadly no, unfortunately it’s moving as it tracks the record from out to in, as before.
When the arm is tracking the outer edge, the bubble is offset slightly to the right of the bullseye on the edge of the ring – the bubble was centred when in this position before I switched the plug 180, I’ve no idea why that changed. But further on, when arm is positioned on inside tracks, the bubble moves further to the right and outside of the bubble, but further off centre than before plug 180 switch.
I can’t see wires touching looking externally. Not sure what’s going on inside, need an endoscopic camera to see what might be toughing what when arm is seated.
Frank, sorry to go on about the dressing of the cables from inside the bell to the plug but I notice that your cartridge is quite deep - headshell to stylus - and I noticed that your ARO is lifted up to accommodate this which means the cables are lifted to and possibly compromised.
Frank, hope you don’t mind me annotating your photo?. If you rotate the plug/socket the cable will emerge from the same side as its connection to the bell - I think from memory -I think its important the wires don’t interfere with the bearing shaft.
I’ve played around for a couple of hours and now have the bullseye level back to where it was, ie pretty well perfect centred inside the ring on the outer track of an LP, but bubble moves to right on inside track.
I could live with this before, but what’s really confusing is how the the arm now wobbles again, which was the problem I had resolved, but returned when I switched the plug 180 degrees.
I’m completely stumped, as the bias line is now horizontal, whereas before it was sloping downwards and after correcting hanger to sit level with with bar it went. Baffling that the wobble has returned with all appearing to be set up ok now. Tried to capture bias line as I now have it in pics below, it looks fairly level, this did the trick first time. Might be worth moving plug back, no idea what that effected but seems to be the only thing different:
Couple shots from above. Perhaps the bias hanger should be rotated slightly to be sitting at a different angle, but not sure why that would suddenly cause the wobble when ok before though?
Sorry it hasn’t worked Frank, but I then thought what happens if you disconnect the plug and making sure it is in a position that doesn’t impede the arm’s movement play a record. If the wobble is still there then it can’t be the plug? Sorry I didn’t think of this originally.
It was a good idea melomane but somehow changed something. I had the same thought and tried it unplugged as I had the arm off and on as i made adjustments to pillar height etc. Same wobble. It crossed my mind that somehow the original plug position with wires more stretched somehow steadied arm. I really can’t work it out.
I wouldn’t give up Frank. I have found the ARO to be a most musical and satisfying tone arm. It beats the SME IV and V - both which I have and use in rotation on my dual armband SME 10 table. The ARO with a humble ATV95E MM cartridge just gets to the music -and I own Lyra, Van den Hul and Tranfiguration MCs.
The Aro beats an SME V? All is relative, but globally I am surprised by your statement.
But you have both, so I can’t argue
Didn’t knew that an SME 10 could accept 2 arms. Have you a picture?
I had previously an SME 20/ 2a during 15 years. The sound was splendid, nice, textured, with great bass. But less lively vs a Rega Rp10 I have now.
I’ll try and get back it back to where I was. It was sounding amazing.
I have a friend with an SME 4, with Dynavector TKR I think, and it sounds dead. Never heard SME 5 but know someone who had both and he preferred the 4, said 5 was over engineered, but now has a graham arm. I don’t pretend to be expert whatsoever, but the aro was singing for a while before this wobble came back.
Hi Mark, just reading through your Aro set up guide. Can I check a detail with you please?
One para reads:
‘Too get the best angles, the ‘U’ shape of the bias hanger should be only 1 to 2mm away from the gradated bias arm when the arm is at rest with the arm tube parallel to the side of the armboard.’
Then:
With the ARO’s arm tube on its rest and parallel to the side of the plinth:
…
3. The distance between the front edge of the bias bar and the bottom of the ‘U’ is 12mm.
With my arm at rest, I currently have the approx 10-12mm space between front of bias bar/shaft and ‘U’ loop of bias hanger. The first para reads like advice is a couple of mm space?
I may have had fat fingers when writing the post you quoted.
From your photos I’d say that the hanger might be a little too far from the bias arm with the arm in the rest position, parallel to the edge of the arm board. Try pushing it back to get about a 10mm gap if it’s currently much more than that.
Same thing happened to me yesterday right after reading this thread and fiddling about !
I believe that the recommended repair is to thread it through with the large aperture at the far end and secure the weight with a blob of Loctite placed at the end of the filament.
Not having any Loctite at the moment, I have threaded it through and sealed the end with a bit of blu tac. Seems to work OK.
I’ve been playing around again today and made a couple of discoveries.
I can only get the bullseye bubble dead centred, in terms of the fore (cartridge/headshell) and aft (counterweight) plane, by raising the pillar height to a height where the arm cup sits so high that the arm is no longer horizontal. So I can get the level perfect as far of the bubble indicates, but to achieve that, the arm tilts visibly downwards, from the cup to the headshell.
I think this may be contributing to the wobble.
Something isn’t right, but assume I need to ignore the bullseye level and try to ensure that as far as I can tell visually the arm sits level and horizontal to the platter?
The Acutus has a built in bubble spirt level and that is showing as centred. I had used long spirit levels when setting up the deck.
Maybe I ignore the Naim bullseye level from now on. Any suggestions would be much appreciated, cheers
