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Multiple arms, multiple cartridges and geometry?

I have read the debates regarding the benefits of different tonearm geometries......Lofgren A and B, Baerwald, Stevenson etc....and I appreciate the benefits of choosing where, on the vinyl record, one wishes to have the least spread of distortion.
I also have read where certain arms seem to perform better with one or other of these geometries?

I have two turntables with three different arms on each one and I have a total of over twenty five different cartridges.
Four of those arms have removable headshells and twenty of my cartridges are mounted on their own headshells ready for installation into any of those four tonearms.
How then.......can I have different geometries for each arm if I don't wish to re-align a cartridge within its headshell depending on the arm in which its installed?
Surely......I must select a single geometry for all my arms so that the cartridges fixed to their headshells....are truly interchangeable?
128x128halcro
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rauliruegas
9,123 posts
 
Dear Halcro: To do that, fully interchangeable, you need that those tonearms share same effective length and if not then you need to " force " all tonearms on the choosed efective length.

Remember that's the effective length where those tonearm geometries moves around.
All those calculations takes as main parameter the effective length and then through its equations achieve the overhang and off-set angle and by difference the spindle to bearing center distance.

I hope this can help.

Regards and enjoy the music,
R.
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stanwal
3,147 posts
 
You have obviously set out to drive yourself nuts. Oh, wait; we are audiophiles and therefore already nuts by definition. Sorry, my bad.
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halcro OP
2,289 posts
 
Dear Raul,
Oh oh.......you mean that when I set up a cartridge on one arm with, say.....Baerwald geometry......it doesn't mean that it will be correct if I change to another arm with a different pivot to spindle distance and overhang?
I somehow feared this might be the case.....and I can easily check it......but damn!!!!......as Stanwal then says.....I am forever going to drive myself mad by changing and checking geometry at every change of tonearm and cartridge?
Oh boy......what a disaster!!?
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mapman
15,679 posts
 
Just go digital and be worry free or at least trade yours for a different set! :-)
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