Peter, on the subject of Zenith, how much wiggle room in the head shell bolts do you have? Is it usually enough to adjust Zenith correctly? Just curious.
Sme 30/2
- Thread starter Bruce B
- Start date
There's about a millimeter play, so unless the cantilever is way off, you usually have enough wiggle room.
Cool. If you want to borrow my Feickert until the Mint shows up, you are welcome to. Joe Pittman has one also if you happen to see him first. I have a feeling it is more accurate than the SME tractor.
Mike,
Yes, it is why no special ultra accurate protactor can be designed for it ... Even the smallest variation in cartridge tip to mounting holes would introduce a significant error.
I have the Feickert alignment protractor and agree it's spindle to pivot tool is great when you have a spot to drop the pivot pin into that allows it to be precise, otherwise you end up having to 'sight' it. in my case, I have a purpose built metal spindle to pivot tool for both my Durand Telos arms which eliminate any issue of error on that. but if you have multiple arms with only paper templates (or no templates, just a distance) the Feickert tool is great.
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That is great that the Telos comes with a custom built tool. It would be nice if more arms had their own.
I just set the overhang. Had to move the arm back quite a way, about 5-6mm from the last cart. I had on there. Set VTF at 1.9gm. to start off with.
The SME V comes with a built in custom alignement tool ... Perhaps it is too simple for hard vinylophes ...
The SME V comes with a built in custom alignement tool ... Perhaps it is too simple for hard vinylophes ...
Sorry I should have said spindle to pivot distance tool. The SME does not require one as it's pivot moves instead of the cartridge. I'm sure the SME tractor works just fine. Maybe not the last word in accuracy though?
After doing some more research online, it appears that SME designed their protractor to be correct for a standard cartridge screw hole to stylus tip distance. No idea what that standard distance is. So it may be correct for the cartridge you have or not. If you could find out what the distance SME designed it around and then measure your own cartridge then you could be sure.
I'm guessing that trying to measure mounting bolt to stylus tip distance is difficult. Especially because ideally the stylus should be loaded before measuring.
I'm guessing that trying to measure mounting bolt to stylus tip distance is difficult. Especially because ideally the stylus should be loaded before measuring.
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Hi Sean, There is only a tiny amount of wiggle room, but I have successfully aligned three different cartridges in the SME V and V-12 arms by rotating them about the zenith axis. My guess is that the rotation is about 5 degrees in either direction.
Thanks Mike. I've been lucky with some of those photos. They do give a good idea of what proper zenith alignment can look like. However, as has been mentioned, if the stylus is not squarely mounted in the cantilever, there will still be an issue. I have photographed stylii from below to see this mounting angle. Here is one example:
Yes, the overhang adjustment takes place by sliding the base of the arm fore and aft. This effects spindle to pivot distances as well as overhang. The SME V was designed assuming a standard cartridge mounting hole to stylus tip distance of, I believe, 9mm or 9.5mm. Cartridge designers did not adopt a standard distance which is why the MINT requires this measurement to be submitted with the order. Thus each MINT protractor for SME arms is specific to that arm and one particular cartridge.
I just aligned a friend's XV-1S on a TriPlanar yesterday with his MINT, and I know exactly what you mean about headshell mounting slots and trying to move the cartridge fore and aft without altering the zenith. I found the best way is to tighten one mounting screw only slightly and get the overhang right, then adjust for zenith, then reconfirm overhang, then tighten the other screw. The SME solution is much easier.
For Bruce and other owners trying to use the SME protractor: It is designed with the standard mounting hole to stylus tip distance. The arm will only line up perfectly within the outlines on the protractor if the cartridge meets this standard. If it does not, one only has to line up the edge of the arm tube with the drawing below on one side. It does not need to be centered to match both sides of the arm tube. The whole idea is that once it is lined up, the spindle to pivot distance will necessarily be correct. At least, this is how I understand it. It is a very elegant solution and make setting up the arm fairly easy.
The MINT is more accurate than the SME. This is because the stylus makes contact with the traced arc and it is an extremely thin line. With the proper magnification and lighting, one can see overhang errors of about 0.1mm. The SME protractor depends upon lining up the arm tube from above with the outline drawing below, which can be about 1"-1.5". That gets you close, but not precisely.
The other big advantage is the zenith lines at the null points.
Here are a couple of photos of my two MINT protractors for the different SME V arms. One is 9", the other 12". Note how much flatter the arc is for the longer arm and how much less the overhang is. Incidently, the headshell offset angle is also much less with the longer arm, so skating force is less.
This is not the first time I have read this about SME tables. With what table did you replace your 20/3?
The MINT can be designed to work quite well with an SME arm. And it is ultra accurate, IMO. There is also that expensive German protractor designed by Dertonearm (Audiogon moniker) that has custom inserts for SME arms of different lenghts. It's called the Uni-Pivot or something and is supposed to also be ulta accurate and convenient.
Yes. As accurate as your gonna get as long as it is right for your particular cartridge.
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