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GT-2000 Tonearm Question

Florida Spin

Florida Spin

New Member
I recently acquired a Yamaha GT-2000L. Has anyone ever rewired the YSA-1 (straight) tonearm?

At the yoke end, there are the 4 leads plus ground, which dive into the junction point. However, at the the cartridge end there are 6 wires per channel lead bundled into each cartridge clip. Why? Has anyone seen this arrangement before? What purpose could it possibly serve? Somewhere down the tube there is another junction point where those 24 wires get soldered to 4 wires. So there's the joint at the clip, the joint in the tube, and the joint where they are directly soldered to the interconnect.

Initially the table sounded really ragged at the top end, so I dutifully aligned the cartridge- again and again. Finally I isolated one channel and then the other and the source of the mess was the left channel. The interconnects are captive so I cleaned the contacts to no effect and manipulated the cable to see if there was some spot where flexing it was create a bigger mess. No dice.

Knowing the cartridge was good, left either the tonearm or interconnects as culprits. Interconnects are easier so I replaced the interconnects with Litz wire running to an RCA phono junction box I mounted on the rear of the unit. Using my interconnects worked and now the unit sounded pretty good but my previous tables were more vocal forward with this cartridge interconnect combination.

I keep looking at those 24 wires.

Anyone care to chime in on this? I'm really thinking I want change out the wire but I do not know what that entails with this arm.
 

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Hi,

Its unusual but 24 very skinny wires are going to be less stiff than 4 fatter wires.
If they measure fine with a multimeter, IMO don't rewire, nothing to gain.

rgds, sreten.
 
Just a listening note- this turntable digs low frequency information out of vinyl like I didn't think was possible. The bass isn't louder, it's lower and much more focused. It makes listening to Pink Floyd- The Wall, "Run" sound ominous. It's fantastic!!
 
So would you say that your replacement of the RCA interconnects has resolved the issue ? I don't know what's involved in re-wiring that arm but I sure wouldn't tear one open without being 100% certain that was actually the problem.

And yes I'd agree with you that the bass on this table is stupendous. It's just so focused and tight!

jblnut
 
Oh yes, replacing the interconnects removed the electrical problem. It also revealed a big difference in midrange response, which I can only attribute to the tone arm wiring. I have used the same cartridge interconnect combination on as follows:

VPI Traveler
VPI Scout 1.1
Marantz 6300
Pioneer 570
Yamaha PF-800

This is the first time I've heard this effect. It's as if every vocalist, on every LP is standing 2 feet back from where they were before or even behind the band. It's weird.
 
What is the cartridge and what is your phono section? Are you getting into some kind of capacitance issue with your cart and cables ?

jblnut
 
It's a honey of a turntable. Sorry I can't shed any light on the tonearm wiring questions. All literature is in Japanese. You are the one treading new ground for the rest of us. Keep us in the loop.

Do you have the YOP-1 style power supply? If not, buy one. OK? If not the original, go for an aftermarket one from Japan. It gives the turntable a handy sonic 'boost'.

Glad to hear that you are excited about how it sounds. It is a pronounced difference to most turntables. It can kick arse with the right music yet sound so lifelike with great recordings. A real music lover's turntable.
 
This why once you've heard it, you realise that overall system virtue comes initially conveyed from the Source component. Given competent amps, speakers and room, upgrading the Source gives everything else the higher quality sound that they all thrive upon.
 
I already posted the bulk of this on VE but since I started here, I figure you might interested in the conclusion.

At any rate, I believe my problem was related to the Ortofon 2M Black Cartridge and only insofar as it is a MM. MM cartridges are a high inductance source, so if high capacitance exists in the circuit you get an LC filter which rolls off the high frequencies. MC cartridges generally have an output low enough to avoid this problem but don't play well with resistance.

The pictures are of the the wiring in the YSA-1. Those copper rods are 16 AWG solid wire in shrink tubing, cold soldered to the terminations. Very low resistance. However the shrink tubing and the copper rods are 4 times the capacitance of the replacement wire.

It appears Yamaha custom designed this for optimal Moving Coil performance.

My problem is solved and I'm happy as can be.

I will retain the YSA-1 core (I really can't think of it as wires) in case I choose to shift to a Moving Coil cartridge. My phono-pre supports it so that may be happening at some point.
YSA1-1.jpg YSA1-2.jpg
As for the disassembly of the arm, in retrospect it wasn't too bad. You just have to figure out the order of things. The largest hurdle is determining the order in which pieces need to come off. The second hurdle is figuring out what screws release those items. In the end the arm can be reduced to the arm and it's yoke without messing with the bearings. That gives you enough room at the yoke end to pull new wires. Reassembly is the obvious reverse. To be honest I did the entire thing feeling like I was making a huge mistake. I wasn't but it's a creepy feeling.

A couple of material observations. One is that Cardas Quad Eutectic solder is a gift from the gods. It has a very low melting point which reduces contact time substantially. I want to solder everything in house, it's a dream to use. If you are using big box store solder- stop it right now, the difference is insane.

Two is the KAB Electro Acoustics silicone tone arm Litz wire. It is much easier to work with than the Cardas wire. I found the best stripper is freshly clipped fingernails. Pinch, pull and ZAP!! you have a wire ready for enamel removal.

Sound wise, I cannot hear a difference between this and the Cardas wire. I haven't tried Cardas Clear though.
 
Interesting findings, wonder if the same issue has dogged others who may have abandoned MM or the table
for the same issue.
Thanks for digging into the arm and posting here .
 
I was considering this modification tonight. Not considering doing it(I might but not yet), just considering it. It occurred to me that the Yamaha arms' (plural) reputation and specs for highish effective mass may well be due to the solid copper rods inside the arm tube. I will admit that I know of no other photo or even mention of this one the internet. No, I'm not doubting it. I 120% believe it. OK? I'm only saying that this is a new insight and I'm glad that Florida Spin posted those photos. It could explain a lot about the arms for the GT 2000 series.

I personally would like to find the finest, particularly flexible wire with the best sound quality for the GT 2000 arm. The relative inflexibility of all of the cabling to my GT 2000(ie arm wiring/ captive power cord and power cable to the outboard power supply) is turning out to be one of the limiting factors in the free movement of my turntable isolation.
 
Here's a fun update.

I don't know if I'm alone in this but every improvement I make sounds great for about 3 hours of listening and then the flaws start to become noticeable, then obvious, then intolerable. In this case following the installation of the new wires and after plenty of burn-in there was an incredible amount of image smearing. I'll spare you a run down of all the dead ends I pursued but I finally became interested in the weight of the original tone arm core as it relates to tonearm mass.

I elevated the yoke end of the core on a stack of business cards (I knew they were good for something) and put the cartridge end on my stylus force gage. Result? Instant max out. Because I'm not a drug dealer, I don't keep anything around that will weigh anything above five grams, so I really don't know how much that thing weighs but it's a minimum 5 grams added weight at the cartridge end.

So, and I know you are going to love this, I stacked a couple of US dimes (a bit over 5 grams) and taped them to the top of the headshell. I re-zeroed the arm and set the proper tracking force. Smearing gone.

So I had inadvertently converted my arm into a low mass arm. If I had run into this earlier in my fight with this turntable I might have taken the time to calculate the optimal mass to load but by now I was officially tired of 'effeing' around with it. I simply wanted to hear some music that didn't drive me insane. I will probably go back and do that later.

One of the reasons I pursued the GT-2000L is that I adore the looks. I COULD NOT leave coins on my tonearm so I spent some time trying to devise a method of adding 5 grams to the tonearm that wouldn't look like ass.

I took soldering wire and weighed out two 2.5 gram coils then elongated the coils into three inch lengths. Then I compressed them with a hammer (pounded them flat and folded them over and pounded some more). This I formed into half moon profiles and loaded into shrink tubing that I heated, thus creating to weighted pods.

I removed the 900 times aligned headshell and pulled the tonearm wiring to the top. I put the pods in and found them to be nice and snug without interfering with the wiring. This made me happy and I set about re-zeroing and setting the tracking force and aligning the cartridge for the 901st time.

Freddy Mercury is no longer jumping all around the room, he's politely occupying center stage.

That all happened last Sunday morning. I'm very much happier with the unit. My listening joy was interrupted by my unhealthy interest in the US elections. 11/8/2016 was 'the day the music died' in my house but I'm getting over it. By the way did anyone else notice that Pink Floyd "The Wall" side 4, "In the Flesh" and "Run Like Hell" are a Trump rally?

I will post a listening update in the near future.
 
If it was the stock YA-39 arm that you had re-wired, you could have simply used a heavy headshell.

Those photos of the copper rods inside the YSA-1's arm tube are a revelation. I never, ever would have guessed that was what was inside.
 
Right? No dice, it's a YSA-1. Those rods were about the last thing I expected to see. When I pulled it out I was puzzled for a minute, I couldn't figure what I had done.
 
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