Dialing in my analog rig - Need help

Many theorize that the differences heard with changing VTA on the fly are due to minute changes in VTF caused by raising and lowering of the pivot point and not due to fractions of a degree changes in the stylus angle. I don't know what is the correct answer and I am not overly sensitive to this so I don't spend a lot of time changing VTA once I find a good spot. I do, however, attempt to find the correct VTA change to make with LPs of different thicknesses but only in a general way. Not for each and every LP. If changing VTA for every LP works for you, go for it. If you try it and don't find it making much difference, don't sweat it. That's my opinion.

Thanks for the responses. I went back to check and raise the VTA on this arm. Boy did I find some trouble.

If VTA is relevant to the cartridge, and "looking" at the cartridge with my laser eyes, I decided to again raise the arm. Upon doing this the arm either got derailed or the adjustment took it off its pivot point. When I set the arm down the needle flattened. I lost it. I was sure I destroyed the cartridge. The needle looked ugly, flattened and off to one side. I told my wife I just destroyed a 2 thousand dollar cartridge. I then realized that the weight of the arm had severely altered. It took some time to figure out what had happened. It seemed that I had raised the arm sufficiently to bottom out the back of the arm to the adjuster. I had to lower the VTA to get things back to where I could adjust the tracking force correctly. The cartridge seems to have survived my ignorance. I haven't tried it yet. What a PIA. There's got to be a better way to adjust VTA on this arm.

Desalvo55:

There is a good way if you can see across the arm at a 3 X 4 index card that has lines. You need to draw a 4" line on one of the horizontal lines on the card (call it AC). Start at"A" end at "C". Then at the pivot end of the arm (point "C") you need a vertical line of 0.15" to be drawn (call this CD). Then connect point "A" to the top of this small vertical line (point D). You now have a 2 degree slope on the line. If you visually line up the arm (make it parallel), when it is placed on a NON ROTATING record with this line (card is on the record) by raising or lowering the arm you will have an SRA close to 92 degrees (optimum if everything is perfect) you can fine tune from there. Get the line as close to the arm as possible to avoid a viewing error. Take Care!!

Desalvo55: It should be a 3 by 5" card not a 3 by 4" card

Thanks stops, that's an easy look. As it is, I basically "rescued" my needle and took what the VPI would give me in terms of height where it seemed it lacked. I don't think I can go any higher which is odd to me.

Well I must be high anyway.

I've been in this hobby for 45 years. Occasionally you hit on something and want to stop the presses, cease all tweaking and wonder what is was you did right. Usually that is but a fleeting moment as we (or I) march on because, "that other recording is effed up and I gotta fix it too syndrome". I digress.

My sub came back from JL Audio, and in one piece even though the palette was broken.. I won't go there, FedEx sucks IMO.

With default settings on the sub, off I went. Last night it sounded way too good without touching the subs volume control. I had changed the location and created what I call the catroffer. It's my Fathom F113 built into the cat tree. It's cat and baby proof to boot. It sits on two large 4" thick slabs of solid marble. This is a new "sub" location to the room. I was listening through my PS Audio PerfectWave DAC using Bridge, streaming FLAC and oh my was I missing the lower octaves. As I mentioned earlier the MBL's only perform to 50Hz. Changing to vinyl means changing cables and I knew my extremely fragile cables were getting flakey so today I re-terminated the Furutech RCA's on both cables. Back to the room to hear my vinyl rig now armed with a sub. (Last time I used the sub is when I introduced the phono preamp to the sub and the sub said "I'm dead now fix me". So this is a new setup if you will).

I was listening to Shiny Toy Guns "Season of Poison" on the DAC/Bridge, a well recorded and melodic album in a hardcore way with dynamics to die for. You could destroy a lessor set of speakers with this title. It was awesome sounding and the sub wasn't even "dialed in". So I performed the SRO, used my iPhone audio tools, made some minor adjustments after I had a good response curve, I replayed through the DAC. It was a bit more controlled, certainly more tuneful but how will it sound through the vinyl medium? Oh ya, I had found a copy of "Season of Poison" on vinyl. What I expected was diminished dynamics and lost resolution but that's not what I heard. It was bigger, airier and more dynamic, yet easier on the ears. We weren't as tense in some dramatic passages as we were driving digital through the DAC. Nothing was lost. Amazing. Next up was Neil Young "Chrome Dreams II". We played the cut "Ordinary People". We've listened to this tune 5 dozen times and more. It's a great tune on a great album and well recorded in Neil Young fashion. But I gotta tell you it was one of those moments. We were swept away in the music. It was awesome. There's a lot going on in this tune but everything had it's place, every instrument, every note. Neil's voice was placed center, just behind the plane of the speakers and so real. The micro-dynamics, the nuances and the sense of individual instruments were more displayed through the vinyl medium as well. The hard to capture background vocal, just a muffled sentence really, was captured clearly, distinctly and with body and texture that simply doesn't exist on my cutting edge digital setup. It was revelatory. I could only grin ear to ear and at the end of the song, both Dad and I stood up and clapped. It was one of those moments.

So I have to believe that my setup, however crude, isn't that bad after all. I'm pretty fussy overall and generally pay attention to detail. There's just so much to learn in audio, even after all these years I guess that's what keeps me coming back to trying new things. After rebuilding my cables I cleaned them with G5 then add some pretty specialized oil that enhances and protects connections between cables. The cleaning process is something I perform on occasion so I cannot attest to whether this enhanced or helped my cause, I doubt it hurt.

I would like to be certain I'm at least as close as I can get to proper tracking, then as others suggested, leave it alone and enjoy the music.