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Cartridge Loading and Compliance Laws

After reading into various threads concerning cartridge/arm compatibility, then gathering information from various cartridge manufacturers I am left feeling confused with head spinning a bit.... Ok, cart compliance I get, arm and total mass I get, arm/cart compatibility and the whole 8-12 Hz ideal res. freq. range I get. But why on earth then do some phono cartridge mfgs claim their carts are ok to use with med. mass common modern arms when they are in the highish 20-35cu compliance range? Am I missing something??

Ie. Soundsmith, VanDenHul, Ortofon and who knows, maybe more??

From what I gather, below 8Hz is bad and above 12Hz is bad. If one is less ideal than the other, which is worse I wonder, too low res. freq. or too high?
jeremy72
jeremy72 OP
97 posts
 
So then in your case, you were able to fix things with a low compliance cart and lightish med mass arm by adding mass to the arm...hmmmm good thinking!

But how about this - what if the tables were turned and someone was dealing with a highish compliance cart and an arm that was a little too heavy for that cart? You can't take away mass from the arm and you wouldn't want to add mass to the headshell either like in your case....maybe a person could find lighter headshell screws for the cart or something....geesh what a ordeal this whole turntable business can be.
tonywinsc
583 posts
 
Correct, if the tables are turned, then you are out of luck. The only choice is a new tonearm or cartridge. Some might say dampening the tonearm would help, and it might. Only thing is, dampening is masking the underlying problem. There still might be consequences or undesireable attributes with dampening. That is different from isolation. Isolating the turntable and tonearm from airborne and mechanical vibrations is always beneficial.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
7,068 posts
 
Correct, if the tables are turned, then you are out of luck.

This is not entirely true. Some arms have multiple weight systems, so if you can use a heavier counterbalance weight closer to the arm bearings that will get you lower effective mass as opposed to lighter weights further out.
tonywinsc
583 posts
 
Good point. When talking about effective mass, we are really talking about inertia and the moment of inertia is proportional to square of the distance from the axis of rotation. So, yes, more counterweight mass closer to the pivot will reduce effective mass.
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rauliruegas
9,123 posts
 
Dear Jeremy72: Laws?, IMHO there are no laws about but only theory about: that sometimes works and sometimes does not it depends on cartridge overall characteristics and tonearm it self.

IMHO it is not easy to take as a rule/laws a " generalization " like the resonance frequency range: 8hz to 12 hz. In this subject I think we can do better if we know what in specific we/you are talking about: which cartridge and which tonearm as which problems you are experienced with or what you don't like or want to improve at quality performance level.

I think that if you bring here that information some of us could help you with out be speculating on something we really can't even imagine.

regards and enjoy the music,
Raul.
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