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Vinyl Asylum Welcome Licorice Pizza (LP) lovers! Setup guides and Vinyl FAQ. |
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Vinyl Asylum Welcome Licorice Pizza (LP) lovers! Setup guides and Vinyl FAQ. |
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In Reply to: RE: 12" vs 14" tonearms posted by ColoKurt on October 2, 2015 at 07:28:29:
Most modern cartridges today are designed for tonearms with effective mass in the neighborhood of 10 to 12-grams. Higher mass tonearms cause the arm/cartridge resonance frequency to become too low thereby allowing warps in the record to excite the resonance resulting in excessive intermodulation distortion and mistracking.
Generally speaking, low-mass tonearms and high-compliance cartridges will provide the best tracking ability. Unfortunately, structural rigidity is inadequate in low-mass tonearms so medium-mass tonearms of 10 to 12-grams effective mass have become the norm. Consequently, high-compliance cartridges have been replaced with medium compliance cartridges.
High-mass tonearms are basically a thing of the past because they require low-compliance cartridges with tracking forces in the 3 to 6-gram range, which causes premature record wear. Low-mass tonearms are also a thing of the past due to structural stability issues. Therefore, nearly all tonearms today are medium-mass and nearly all cartridges today are medium compliance.
When tonearms become longer it requires more material and greater mass. If you make a 14 or 16-inch tonearm with medium mass, its structural stability suffers and performance suffers as a result. Therefore, 10 to 12-inches is the maximum length for which all the critical parameters can be maintained at optimal levels.
Best regards,
John Elison
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Follow Ups
- RE: 12" vs 14" tonearms - John Elison 08:13:22 10/02/15 (1)
- Thanks for the reply (nt) - ColoKurt 11:31:59 10/02/15 (0)
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