Pioneer & Pickering

[IowaMike]

I've acquired a Pioneer PL-S50 that has a Pickering cartridge with a DSE-1 stylus on it. The stylus was trash so I ordered a replacement from LPGear. In the interim I put an Audio-Technica AT92E on the Pioneer arm. It played and sounded fairly decent although when using the auto feature, the arm would bounce as it lowered onto the album.

Upon receiving the replacement stylus for the Pickering, I installed it and set everything up per the owners manual for the table. The arm wants to wander away from the platter on lowering if I set it parallel. It takes setting it to more than optimum balance weight to get it to lower onto the album then it still wants to bounce. Once it's on the album, the playback sound is terrible. I've tried different ohm settings on the amp (SA-8800) but can't get a good sound out of it.

I'm tempted to put the Audio-Technica back on & try the Pickering on my Denon DP-59L. Only problem I see with that is that I can't find any impedance specs for the Pickering.

Any knowledgeable opinions or insight is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[boreas]

It's not a problem with the cartridge. There are a few things to do with your setup that could cause the problem you report, all involving correct tracking force, anti-skate and the relationship between the two. When you combine this with the apparent lack of damping in your cuing bar, you can get the sort of problems you describe.

John

 

[IowaMike]

Thanks for the response. I was figuring that it was more to do with the table/tonearm than the cartridge. Found this particular table at a yardsale for $10 so it probably needs a teardown & a good once over.

I finally found some info regarding the cartridge based on the patent # I found on it. Seems to be a V15 Series 7.