Ross Bolen
New Member
Recently picked up a pioneer PL-750 as a back-up/2nd room table. Got it home and a quick play test sounded fine. Anti skate was at 0. I decided to check the tracking force before playing anything valuable. It was just over 10g!
so, I rebalanced the tonearm. It has the original pioneer cartridge that probably came with it with a suggested tracking force between 1.7 - 2.3. I reset it to 2 and at any “acceptable” force either the auto return wants to engage or the tonearm wants to drift back toward the armrest. I set the tracking force high enough to keep it from wanting to drift, and sure enough there was terrible distortion. As an experiment I kept adding weight until I actually got it to sound really good. But when I checked it my gauge read a tracking force of 44 g! At any reasonable force, the arm drifts slightly and the readings fluctuate like crazy. The slightest movement of the weight would jump from something like 1.6 to 4.5. Tested the gauge against my other table and it still reads right where I set it.
I’m guessing the stylus is very worn, but I’m looking to see if there is another potential tonearm issue before replacing cartridge.
The table also doesn’t seem to like any anti skate. At 0 it will track at a ridiculous TF. Almost any addition of anti skate makes the arm want to drift back out.
so, I rebalanced the tonearm. It has the original pioneer cartridge that probably came with it with a suggested tracking force between 1.7 - 2.3. I reset it to 2 and at any “acceptable” force either the auto return wants to engage or the tonearm wants to drift back toward the armrest. I set the tracking force high enough to keep it from wanting to drift, and sure enough there was terrible distortion. As an experiment I kept adding weight until I actually got it to sound really good. But when I checked it my gauge read a tracking force of 44 g! At any reasonable force, the arm drifts slightly and the readings fluctuate like crazy. The slightest movement of the weight would jump from something like 1.6 to 4.5. Tested the gauge against my other table and it still reads right where I set it.
I’m guessing the stylus is very worn, but I’m looking to see if there is another potential tonearm issue before replacing cartridge.
The table also doesn’t seem to like any anti skate. At 0 it will track at a ridiculous TF. Almost any addition of anti skate makes the arm want to drift back out.
