I've got my budget TT set-up (almost) for adding vinyl to my headphone system, Seduction is on the way.
I grew up with LP's and I currently have a table on the main system so doing a basic, decent cartridge alignment isnt a problem but I am far from an expert and never had the desire to get too technical with it.
But, I picked up another Shure M97XE, and as seems customary with this cart. (and this is my third) the cantilever isnt perfectly in-line. So during cart. mounting I aligned the cantilever which resulted in some slight but audible distortion. I realigned, aligning the cartridge body instead which sounds fine but doesnt make much sense with the cantiever being slightly askew. So I've gone back and forth with this, driving me nuts in the process ... mainly due to assinine mounting issues related to mounting hardware (screws/nuts) with the Shure in a Rega arm which is a rant I'll stay away from for now.
To cut to the chase, after re-aligning to the cantilever and tweaking it several times, I end up having to go back to aligning the cartridge body itself. It sounds good this way eventhough conventional wisdom says I should be aligning the cantilever. The only thing that I can think of is that the stylus itself may be fixed slightly askew on the cantilever compensating for things. I dont have a loop or any way of actually looking at the stylus itself. Since it sounds good with the cart. body aligned, I've decided to leave it be, atleast for the time being.
But I would like some input from the catridge alignment wizards.
Thanks
I grew up with LP's and I currently have a table on the main system so doing a basic, decent cartridge alignment isnt a problem but I am far from an expert and never had the desire to get too technical with it.
But, I picked up another Shure M97XE, and as seems customary with this cart. (and this is my third) the cantilever isnt perfectly in-line. So during cart. mounting I aligned the cantilever which resulted in some slight but audible distortion. I realigned, aligning the cartridge body instead which sounds fine but doesnt make much sense with the cantiever being slightly askew. So I've gone back and forth with this, driving me nuts in the process ... mainly due to assinine mounting issues related to mounting hardware (screws/nuts) with the Shure in a Rega arm which is a rant I'll stay away from for now.
To cut to the chase, after re-aligning to the cantilever and tweaking it several times, I end up having to go back to aligning the cartridge body itself. It sounds good this way eventhough conventional wisdom says I should be aligning the cantilever. The only thing that I can think of is that the stylus itself may be fixed slightly askew on the cantilever compensating for things. I dont have a loop or any way of actually looking at the stylus itself. Since it sounds good with the cart. body aligned, I've decided to leave it be, atleast for the time being.
But I would like some input from the catridge alignment wizards.
Thanks