KentTeffeteller
Gimpus Stereophilus!
The Ortofon Concorde uses a 52 mm overhang to get Stevenson Geometry. Meaning mount, balance, set tracking force on a Technics turntable like your SL-1500C and my original SL-1500 with no other setup involved.
Inner Groove Distortion- Turntable problem?
- Thread starter 80sonvinyl
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- distortion igd vinyl
The Ortofon Concorde uses a 52 mm overhang to get Stevenson Geometry. Meaning mount, balance, set tracking force on a Technics turntable like your SL-1500C and my original SL-1500 with no other setup involved.
Final_Baton
Well-Known Member
This is not normal.
You should hear a difference in how loud/hot (and how they sound) the left or right channel sound when you turn the AS up or down. Especially with headphones.
if you don't hear any difference, something is wrong here.
maybe your AS is not working
I hear it through my speakers on all the tables I've had. the stereo field changes when I change antiskate (one channel gets progressively more present as I go too low/high and I hear distortion when going too far).
the stereo panning gets too focused on the left when I crank it too high, and too focused on the right when I set it too low. and when you dial it properly : boom! you get a balanced stereo field. with a perfectly centered ''center channel'' (instruments panned at center such as bass, kick, and snare [the latter is sometimes off-centered a bit] and main vocal [which sometimes has panned overdubs/effects but the main melody is almost always dead-on center]) that's perfectly placed in-between left speaker and right speaker. you hear these instruments emmanating between the speakers, right at the mid-point between them
maybe this is actually easier to set via speakers, I dunno
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80sonvinyl
Member
Well in that case I don't know what to do other than call up the store and ask them to have a look. I mean, the turntable is only a few months old. I have a funny feeling that they're going to say, correct or not, that 'this is normal'.
Also, Technics support are one of the most abysmal product support services I've ever encountered.
When I contacted them about my distortion issue a while back, they didn't even mention VTF, antiskate or alignment. You know what they said? 'Try turning the unit off and on again'. I kid you not.
When bullshitters like that are working in the support department, it really lowers faith in the product/brand as a whole.
patient_ot
Super Member
There is nothing wrong with the product. Service from the stateside branches of foreign companies has often been abysmal. Today, service and support (no matter the product) is usually outsourced to a third party that handles multiple accounts. It's someone getting paid a very low wage to read off a sheet of stock answers. Can't expect much more these days, I'm afraid. A turntable is not something most people should mess with if they are afraid to do set up work and basic troubleshooting on their own. Sorry.
80sonvinyl
Member
I'm trying it on different records and hear no difference whatsoever. I'm also turning the knob to extremes quite quickly while records are playing and haven't even had the hint of a skip or any bit of distortion in doing so.
Final_Baton
Well-Known Member
personally I wouldn't turn the AS dial quickly while record is playing, I'd be affraid of damaging the stylus(smashing it against the grooves' walls) while doing so. These are delicate machine, proceed delicately!
turn the dial very slowly (and I'd even suggest : just a bit at a time)
place it at same value as your VTF. sit back and listen for a minute or two.
then increase it a little bit while disc is playing. sit back and listen for a minute or two.
then increase it a bit more while disc is playing. sit back and listen for a minute or two.
do so until you reach a figure that's high but not crazy high (maybe 0.75 to 1 up from your VTF. not like 2 up)
you should hear a increasingly more present left channel (to the point that it becomes a bit distorted when up too much).
you can repeat the same process, but this time go lower than your VTF.
each time you sit back to listen after an ajustment, focus on kick, snare and main vocal. each time, try to locate where it is between the two speakers (is it dead center? a bit more towards right? a bit more towards left? quite a bit towards left? etc). also focus on how hot/present the left and right channels are
you can also do the same process but while bringing your AS up a bit and then back down.
after done listening to a position, turn it up a little bit, the listen, and turn back down to previous level and listen. that'll allow you to gauge what that last ''going up in value'' move did to the sound
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80sonvinyl
Member
As I say, I don't hear any difference, let alone distortion. Surely with antiskate at 0, according to what you say, the sound should be very pronounced towards one channel
Final_Baton
Well-Known Member
well, something is wrong I think.
what VTF are you running at the moment? just curious
80sonvinyl
Member
2.1g
80sonvinyl
Member
Like, the thing is, instruments are very often panned to one channel anyway. Am I right in thinking that it's useless trying to focus on, say, a snare that's panned towards the left anyway. It's not gonna move all the way to the right.
However even using headphones, with vocals and other pronounced bits in the music, I hear absolutely no change when I set antiskate to it's extremes.
Final_Baton
Well-Known Member
There's always a couple instruments panned center or close to it. if you want to have a good stereo image, these need to be in the right place. you also need to have the same output and presence from both left and right channel
The point here is that your AS doesn't work
Good luck with figuring out the problem, I'm out of ideas here
The point here is that your AS doesn't work
Good luck with figuring out the problem, I'm out of ideas here
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patient_ot
Super Member
That doesn't mean his AS is broken.
Here's a point.
I have a friend that produces underground hip hop in his spare time. He was working on a track and wanted me to listen to it, because he thought there was something wrong with the bass on it.
He's a little older than me but not old enough to where his hearing is shot. He also has decent gear in his studio.
I took a listen to the track on my EQ corrected headphones and knew what was wrong. He could not tell on his monitors. He was probably listening for something else in the track and failed to take into account the sample.
What happened was he sampled a 60s funk record and looped the sample. Like a bunch of stereo records from the 60s, the instruments have hard panning. The guitar was in one channel and the bass was in the other. Since he has no access to multis his solution was to sum the sample to mono and EQ it a bit more to fix his hip hop beat.
On a Technics TT, and many others the AS mech is a spring adjustment under the dial. Despite the numbers on the dial it doesn't work in exact increments. The numbers are only a guide, which is a concept many people don't understand.
Now, I have measured the differences with anti-skate settings and on a Technics, and other Japanese turntables I've had with spring AS mechanisms, you are looking at 0.5db of difference between channels AT MOST when you jack the settings to extremes. Some AS mechs may work differently and provide more aggressive adjustment but it doesn't usually work that way on these turntables.
^^^^^^
Look at it this way, you could be having to bend the tonearm wires to affect anti-skate lol.
Look at it this way, you could be having to bend the tonearm wires to affect anti-skate lol.
Punk_oldie
Active Member
Not wanting to gatecrash, and I have read the whole thread! Can I ask what process you've used to confirm your VTF? Do you have a set of digital scales, or are you using the 'float the tonearm to set zero VTF' approach?
80sonvinyl
Member
The latter. But I have played with VTF endlessly and nothing changes
patient_ot
Super Member
For whatever reason, many people aren't that good at properly balancing a tonearm. Even though I can do it very well, my OCD leads me to use a digital scale to check my work. They are cheap and there is no reason not to have one.