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Turntable arm wobbly? Setup advise

Hi I have recently bought another turntable. I had a couple tables a few years back. All Nottinghams. The new one is a spacedeck with heavy kit. I installed the cartridge and looks like its aligned right on my protractor. I've some this before so I'm pretty confident that I got it right. Tracking force is set at approx 2.0 grams for the dynavector xx-2 cart, VTA looks close arm just below parallel in the back.

The sound is pretty good no but to me it looks like the cart is pulling in and out slightly as the record is playing like slightly wobbling to the inside and outside as the record is playing. I don't know if this might have to do with the anti skate? The seems to sound better with no anti skate at all. My dealer I remember years ago told me to just remove the whole anti skate mechanism on my dais.

Also to my eye it looks like the azimuth might be slightly off the head shell is slightly not level. Is there a way to adjust this on the ace space arm.

Thanks, Ryan
ejlif
mingles
775 posts
 
I don't know what to say about the wobble, but others have ditched anti-skate and like how it sounds. Have you seen this recent thread:

Remove your bias for better sound
sarcher30
596 posts
 
Sounds like an off center spindle hole in that record. Try some other records. If it's not the record then you might have a compliance mismatch causing the arm to oscillate. If that is the case then moving the TT support and/or trying different materials under the TT can sometimes solve that problem. Is your TT on a suspended floor?
elizabeth
6,726 posts
 
One point is (pun intended) is the arm a unipivot?
Or a standard dual bearing on the sides.
Unipivot arms are pivoting on a single pinpoint bearing, and can easily wobble around if they are not set up well.
Unipivot arms can be lifted right off the pivot. And if not set properly on the pivot, may display a lot of bad behavior, like not working well ar all.
So, you can tell (anyone can tell) if they have a unipivot arm by lifting up on the arm. A unipivot will just lift right off the base. Any arm with standard bearings will not lift off the base.
If you DO lift a unipivot off the bearing. care is needed to set it down so the spike is correctly in the cup of the arm.
stringreen's avatar
stringreen
5,112 posts
 
Liz is correct again..... get rid of the anti-skate. I dumped mine and the sound got better.
bifwynne
2,069 posts
 
Hey Stringreen, I just posted a "Kudos to Pter Ledermman" OP about a week or two ago. If you get a chance pull it and take a look at what Peter told me.

For the benefit of others, I'll quickly mention that it was re-tip time for my Zephyr. It seemed just a tad early, so I asked Peter if he noticed whether there were any unusual wear patterns. He advised me that one side of the stylus was worn more than the other side, suggesting that I had an AS problem.

Like you, I also own the VPI Classic, an unstabilized uni-pivot. As most VPI owners know, VPI advises AGAINST using the mechanical AS device. And I followed that advice and the result was a prematurely worn stylus. And yes . . . I did put a little twist on the tonearm wire.

So there are two schools of thought out there: VPU -- no AS; Peter Ledermann -- use AS.

As a compromise, I am using the VPI AS device, but set it to the absolute minimum force. I'll report back in about 1000 hours to let you guys know how it works.

Oh . . . and btw, I can not hear any differemce in sound quality one way or the other.
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