On a day off today, I did something about my dissatisfaction with replay from my records. I had noticed for a while that they were all front, no grunt.
I found that with zero tracking force and bias, the stylus floated about 6 or 7mm above the record surface. So I moved the counterweight forward into the right position, the stylus now a millimeter above the record. Tracking force and bias were then reset as per cartridge manufacturer’s instructions. Quick check that the arm was still parallel to the record. Presto! Front and grunt! Happy chap.
Passing this on in case you are similarly nonplussed with your records. The tracking force of the counterweight is an easy place to look in the first instance. Hopefully you too can get the pleasure back.
I couldn’t sleep without one It’s hard enough to get it floating 1 mm above the record as well as Christopher did, and then you still don’t know how precise the tracking force dial on the arm really is. Rega’s, for instance, isn’t very, and the scale marks are not overly fine grained
It’s in any case satisfying to have confirmed that all is correct. Because of all that had been said about Rega’s anti-bias dial, I spent over 50 euros on a test record, and after running the tracking tests and much adjusting back and forth I could confirm that the result was exactly the same as I would have had following Rega’s free advice. But it felt good.
(I also spent over 200 on Rega’s Atlas gauge to confirm the exact same tracking force result as the 5 euro gauge from Amazon )
This solution is definitely tonearm dependent, IMO. My arm is designed to be dialed in for VTF completely from the arm counterweight position: there is no tracking force dial on the arm otherwise. I like it that way better. The setup is more straightforward.
It had not occurred to me that the tracking force dial on my arm might not read correctly. So I checked it with my old Goldring stylus gauge. And it does.
Best of all, thanks to this simple fix of tracking force, I have fallen back in love with with my AT-OC9 ML/II and my records. I hadn’t been playing them much.
Perhaps ‘hard’ has been taken too literally. It’s slightly fiddly maybe; I am meticulous and want the arm to be perfectly level. It’s an operation only needed after the counterweight has been removed and doesn’t need to be done again so I can take my time getting it dead level.