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My cantilevers always angle to the right!

jkilla

jkilla

Out of Touch
My (suspension) cantilevers always angle to the right!

The last few cartridges I've owned, my cantilever always angles to the right ever so slightly! sometimes a small twist too :(

I use the Denon Sharthand overhang alignment of 50mm, Anti-skate same as VTF minus .25 . I always measure VTF with both a digital stylus gauage and a shure SFG2.



What the heck is causing it? My tonearm on my turntable does pivot a tiny tiny amount when I swing the tonearm out of the tonearm rest, but other than that??

The sound is fine, but it annoys the hell out of me seeing these cantilevers with these slight angles.
 
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Are you using cartridges with very compliant suspensions? That photo looks like a moving coil job, and their suspensions usually aren't too floppy.

I've only seen this happen if the vertical bearing (the one that controls horizontal movement) has a lot of friction, or if the suspension is floppy, the antiskate's set too high. I take it the cantilevers start out perfectly straight and acquire the tilt over time-- true?
 
It sounds like the anti-skate isn't set right, and is causing the cantilever to be regularly pulled towards one side, more than the other. I'd look there first, although things like unevenly worn/loose bearings, as wualta suggests, could also cause this. I've seen quite a few secondhand cartridges which had this problem, too, so you aren't the only one facing it.
 
wualta said:
I take it the cantilevers start out perfectly straight and acquire the tilt over time-- true?
Click to expand...

Ideally, yes. But stylus assemblies are put together by hand. It takes a deft touch to get the cantilever seated properly in its elastic suspension, properly aligned, and with the stresses in the suspension relieved so that the cantilver doesn't shift. Back when we had real hi-fi shops that stocked more than one of an item, we'd have a salesperson get out several samples of a cartridge and examine each cantilever for straightness...and there were variations. Now that more and more of us buy cartridges and styli on line, we can only hope that whichever Tom, Dick or JICO picks ours from the dozens in stock, happens to be one that is straight, that we'd have picked for ourselves if we had the choice.

This doesn't even get into the issue of proper alignment of the diamond tip. I've seen third-party styli where a much-touted fancy tip is rotated in its mounting to the cantilever. That pretty much makes it useless for anything...much less playing records.
 
GP49: I think Wualta's question was rather aimed particularly at the thread starter - in order to check, whether he's sure that the problems weren't present right from the start... Using present tense might not have been ideal for that purpose, though.

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini
 
wualta said:
Are you using cartridges with very compliant suspensions? That photo looks like a moving coil job, and their suspensions usually aren't too floppy.

I've only seen this happen if the vertical bearing (the one that controls horizontal movement) has a lot of friction, or if the suspension is floppy, the antiskate's set too high. I take it the cantilevers start out perfectly straight and acquire the tilt over time-- true?
Click to expand...

There must be less than 10 hours on this stylus as I just opened it!!

it's not very high compliance, more like mid-high


As a test, i set the tonearm in the down, "playing" position while the record was stationary, and it looks like the needle flexes to the right, as I described.

The VTF for this particular stylus is 1.75, I have been using the anti-skate at 1.25 but have since dialed it back to zero
 
jkilla said:
There must be less than 10 hours on this stylus as I just opened it!!

it's not very high compliance, more like mid-high


As a test, i set the tonearm in the down, "playing" position while the record was stationary, and it looks like the needle flexes to the right, as I described.

The VTF for this particular stylus is 1.75, I have been using the anti-skate at 1.25 but have since dialed it back to zero
Click to expand...

A serious question I'm asking............when setting it down on the un-spinning album and the stylus looks to deflect to the outside of the un-spinning album......are you sure your arm isn't torquing to the inside?

What does your arm do when zero floated and set at zero antiskate? Will it stay in any position you set it?
 
please correct me if I am wrong

If it angles to the RIGHT (toward the rest) while playing, that is NOT ENOUGH anti-skate, right ? Its being pulled INWARD to the cart will look like its before the horse - oopps I mean before the needle.

Too much anti skate and the cart would lean toward the rest with the needle leaning left.

Try this GENTLY (note gently is BOLDED)...With the cart OFF center it. Now with the table NOT spinning, lower it onto an lp. Does it sit straight ? Good

Now increase the ANTI SKATE say to 2.5

Play...does it still lean to the right or is it straighter ?If straight, slowly back off the anti-skate to you can get closer to where it should be but the needle doesn't cant to one side

If no matter what you do it still leans right, I would do some anti skate checking on a blank track (test record) to see is it the anti-skate or is the cart suspension weak...

SORRY !! I just read closer...It cants even when not playing..Its the suspension...and whatever you are doing is causing that cant...I am suspect of insufficient anti-skate when you break these in...they don't arrive that way , do they ?
 
Have you checked to make sure the headshell is level with the platter? Also have you checked to make sure that the table itself is level as well?
 
Obviously it can't be the phenomena I described. In this case, it looks as if the arm were trying to drag the stylus toward the spindle, the way a malfunctioning auto-return mechanism might. For the antiskate to cause it, it would have to be working backwards.

Or, as static14 said, the table is well off level. Or, as GP49 said, the suspension wasn't properly stress-relieved at the factory and you've had a string of bad luck. Or..

Do your cantilevers point increasingly to the right over time, or do they reach an equilibrium point early on? and if you gave them some time off the turntable to recover, would they straighten out?
 
It is funny because they are very stiffly to the right, ie the cantilever isn't bent to the right, but the suspension is. Also noticing the diamond is ever slightly rotated too.

My headshell is straight perfectly.
I've been watching the stylus as records have been playing and I see no evidence of any pulling or anything weird.

The issue is at the suspension level?!

Sent from my SGH-T999V using Tapatalk 2
 
These are new cartridges from Denon and audio technica.
My table is as level as I can determine without a bubble level.

It's just weird how quickly the suspension reaches this state, since this is brand new out of the box
 
jkilla said:
It is funny because they are very stiffly to the right, ie the cantilever isn't bent to the right, but the suspension is. Also noticing the diamond is ever slightly rotated too.

My headshell is straight perfectly.
I've been watching the stylus as records have been playing and I see no evidence of any pulling or anything weird.

The issue is at the suspension level?!

Sent from my SGH-T999V using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...

That's exactly what you'd expect from the two phenomena under consideration. The force, whatever it is, dragging the arm toward the spindle will tend to deflect the cantilever to the right. The point at which that deflection will first occur is at the suspension bushing. If that occurs long enough and persistently enough, the suspension may "normalize" itself at that deflected position.

I'd try using a stylus that isn't out of alignment and observe whether there was a shift rightward while playing, either right away or over time.

Not sure what to think about the rotated diamond. Are all the deflected styli you have that way? If so, I'd suspect off-axis wear, caused by the deflected cantilever rather than an actual rotated stone.

John
 
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boreas said:
I'd try using a stylus that isn't out of alignment and observe whether there was a shift rightward while playing, either right away or over time.

John
Click to expand...

Hey John, sadly I went to look at my Shure N111HE and it was straight a month ago and it is now slight twisted, not angled, but twisted. I'm about to throw my table against the wall :P
 
jkilla said:
Hey John, sadly I went to look at my Shure N111HE and it was straight a month ago and it is now slight twisted, not angled, but twisted. I'm about to throw my table against the wall :P
Click to expand...

Bummer! The same force that could deform the bushing could also cause the cantilever to rotate in the bushing. What a drag! (pun intended :))

John
 
It is truly a revoltin' development. I wish I could see the thing in operation to get a clue.
 
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