Time to choose: Baerwald, Lofgren, Stevenson ?

@thom_mackris

I view this in the same way that I view people who don’t play half of their records because they don’t sound good.

With this point of view It seems like you are ignoring all formats of the vinyl records, except the "12 inch format. I don’t play half of the record simply because "7 inch single is nearly two times smaller in size than "12 inch and there is only 1 track per side recorded on 45rpm on the 7 inch records. Why do i need Baervald/Lofgren null points outside of the surface of my vinyl when we have Stevenson?

I’m not into classical music at all, i prefer black music from the 60s and 70s (Jazz, Soul) on original pressings, but the logic of stevenson works great for small format of the vinyl singles (aka 45s) in any genre of music.

That's a good point about 7" records.  They're a bit off my radar.

Funny thing is, that I've not seen anyone develop math around smaller formats.  Stevenson would likely be the closest to an ideal alignment.

Frankly, I don't find distortion increasing across the record with Baerwald, so if I started collecting 45's, I'd likely stick with it - only because I'm not going to get out the protractor for every record ;-)

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier

I'm generally in the same camp as Lewm on this one: I align the cartridges based on the alignment the tonearm was designed for. Since most of my tonearms use removable head shells and were designed for a 52mm distance from the head shell connection to the stylus, this has the added benefit that the cartridge needs minimal if any realigning when put into another tonearm.

I may be missing something here.  I've had a long night on my CAD software and I'm a bit dimensionally challenged at the moment.

If you have two tonearms using universal headshells:

• Tonearm-A with effective length A and cartridge-A:  the tonearm is designed for Baerwaald and this cartridge/headshell is aligned for Baerwaald
  
• Tonearm-B with effective length B and cartridge-B:  the tonearm is designed for Stevenson and aligned as such.

If you swap the cartridge-B/headshell-B combo over to tonearm-A, you would absolutely need to perform a new alignment.  I guess I don't get the concept of minimal realignment.  It either needs a new setup (alignment) or it doesn't.

Even if both arms were aligned for the same geometry (e.g. Baerwaald), the different effective lengths would mandate a different offset angle..

The whole concept of effective length is a dangerous one, because, two tonearms specified (for example) to have an effective length of 250mm would have different pivot-spindle specifications if one was intended for Stevenson or Loefgren and the other for Baerwaald. 

I'm having problems visualizing any scenario where you could make any cross arm swapping work, but I'll ponder this one ;-)

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier Design

Thom,

If the cartridge is aligned as designed by manufacturer, then the cartridge is straight in the headshell. Now move it another tonearm and align it according to that tonearm’s design: it will again be straight in the headshell. To the extent that the tonearms are designed to have different offset angles, those are manifest in the arm tube. So the only thing that could change then is how far in the headshell the cartridge is. But if both tonearms are designed to have the stylus 52mm from the tonearm connection, that doesn’t change either.

If you have difficulty visualizing this, then visualize moving an SPU from one tonearm to another. This is just replicating that with a normal cartridge & headshell.

sampsa55

If the cartridge is aligned as designed by manufacturer, then the cartridge is straight in the headshell.

Oh no, that's not at all necessarily the case. As others have pointed out, there's often a slight misalignment of the cantilever within the cartridge itself. Proper cartridge alignment aligns the cantilever to the record, and not the cartridge to the headshell. This is where mirrored alignment gauges - such as the WallyTracktor - really excel.