Azimuth?

Punker X

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I was playing the Cardas disk and using an oscope and got my turntable a little more dialed in. I just got done listening to an LP of real music and not tones. Quite a surprize, I had turned all the tone controls off and it sounded a lot better than it used to. Souned like with the tone controls in.

Anyway, I'm not sure I totally understand Azimuth. Not even sure if I can adjust it on my table. But I got the channels pretty even but the right side is still a little stronger.

I also think it might be time for a new headshell. I notice with just the arm sitting at rest the signal on the right side has a little more noise then the left. If I disconnect the headshell the are look to be the same noise level. Any ideas besides the headshell?

X
 
Azimuth is adjusted by rotating the whole headshell side to side. You are trying to get the stylus perfectly perpendicular to the groove when looking at it head on. This is not the same as VTA (vertical tracking or tracing angle). If you have azimuth adjustments AFAIK it would be on the headshell itself by way of an allen head.
If you need a new headshell, Sumiko has one that has adjustable azimuth.
I've got one and it seems to be more of a PITA than anything else.
Brad
 
I did some searching on the internet and figured it out. No real azimuth adjustment on my turntable, there is a little play in the headshell and your can twist it a little then tighten it with the thumb screw. I tried it in both directions. I got a mirror protractor and it seems to be dead on as far as azimuth.

I'm starting to think I may have some tracking error. I had the tonearm off the table and there is some play when you bolt it back in. Using the sweep LP and just playing music the high right channel seems to be in different parts of the record. As it gets toward the center it seem to even out. At the outer edge it is off quite a bit. Also seems to be more with heavy bass. Higher freqs don't seem as affected. It hits the two points on the protractor. I think I'm going to have to print up that gauge that show the degree of error

Another question, when you use the sweep LP it says to check the azimuth when these tracks that only one channel is modulated. You to adjust it to minimize the signal on the unmodulated channel. I get crosstalk in both sides, but twisting the headshell didn't seem to make any difference at all. Should there be some cross talk our should it be dead quiet.

A pretty neat trick with my 2110 tuner, on the oscope you can see this. The right channel will present a straight up and down line, the left a flat horz line. with the crosstalk it is slightly off.

Spent enough time on it today.

X
 
It is my understanding that you can never completely eliminate the crosstalk error. Even with adjustable azimuth you will still have some. Go for the absolute lowest levels you can get.

Are the tracks on the Cardas out of phase?

If so, they should cancel out one another when switched to mono.
With mono in, go for the lowest signal you can get and you should be done.
I believe what I have said is correct, but don't take it to the bank. :) There are others who have forgotten more on this subject than I'll ever know.
Brad
 
I got tired of listening to tones and it was driving my dogs nuts. I hooked the turntable up to my HP oscope and the signals were perfectly out of phase. However the right channel being a little more noisey the signal is a bit higher.

The sonic cleaning is pretty neat on it too. You could hear when the crud came off the stylus.

The low freq out of phase test was pretty cool too. Yes the signals just about canceled each other out. But you could hear things vibrating in the room.

This could really take weeks to tweak a table out to perfection, if indeed it could ever be done.

X
 
Originally posted by Pat S.
P/X,

Did you notice an improvment in sound quality after you played the degausing tones?

Pat

Pat,

I didn't really notice much of a difference, I was tweaking on the table at about the same time so it would be hard to say what made the biggest difference. Over all the fine tuning did have a significant affect on the sound.

I'm not sure on this and maybe someone else that knows more can comment. I don't think that deqausing has an affect on a MM cartridge. I believe it has more affect on MC's. I do know when it hit the higher end you could here the crude coming off the needle. It would make a pop, when it got to the really high freq you could hear a sizzle sound. The was long after I was able to hear the tone.

X
 
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