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All of a sudden, and sporadically, when the tonearm on my P3 gets almost to the end of a record, it jumps back about 1/4", making that scratching sound, which makes me nearly jump out of my chair. It's never done this before.Hoping it will help, I have increased the tracking force and anti-skating from 1.75 (recommended) to 2.0. But I'm wondering what the problem is--why this would start so suddenly.
Any ideas?
Follow Ups:
Can you repeat this if you play the same side of the same record again?Try using a fairly simple album and center the image by adjusting the anti-skate and see if that helps.
That anti skate setting can be pretty nebulous. My previous cart was and OM-30 which is very high compliance and it was easy to set it using the HFNRR test record and by visual inspection. Now I have a low compliance X5 HOMC type and it took extra head weight to get it to pass the next to last test band but the anti-skate was almost at zero when set according to the test record. Changing the anti-skate up and down did not deflect the cantilever either way. I left it low and then noticed after a while that the image was a bit off to the right so I bumped it up until the image was centered.
I noticed it happened twice at the end of side one of DSOTM. I've since lowered the anti-skate to somewhere between 1.0 and 1.5 (it's hard to tell exactly where you are on the Rega tonearm), and it hasn't happened since. It seems only to happen on long records, where the grooves come pretty close to the edge.
Mr VA, Rega expert, help this kind poster out!!
Great idea. I'll e-mail him. Thanks for thinking of it.
I had a similar issue with my AR turntable using the Michell record clamp....my Shure VxMR hits the edge before the end of the record and bounces off...on mine it only happens on certain records with limited dead wax.
Thanks, dadbar
Check to see if the cue arm is going all the way down. (I mean the thing the tonearm rests on as you lower the lever. I might have the wrong terminology, and I don't wish to confuse you.)
When it happened, I watched and saw that the arm, towards the end of the record, was contacting the cue thingy, which had dropped, but only 90% of the way down. And it skipped back.
I gave that thingy a couple of gentle pushes down and it kind of burped or something, and then it was right as rain again.
Hope this helps
Jeff
Thanks, R Jeff. I checked that out. It didn't seem to be out of order, but I hadn't thought to look there until you mentioned it. I pushed down, but didn't notice any click or burp or what have you. It seems to be working now, after I lowered the antiskate.
Possibly the tonearm wiring is binding up?
In addition to playing around with antiskate, double check to see if your table is perfectly level. I also wonder if a worn or damaged stylus could be part of the problem? How many hours on the stylus?
I could need a new cartridge. I'm home all day, and play records fairly often.I checked the level a few weeks ago, and corrected it. It was just a teeny bit off from front to back, perfect from L-R. I wonder if I should have rebalanced the arm. I think I'll do that again next.
It's such an odd thing to have happen, needing a new cartridge didn't occur to me.
It _is_ an odd problem, especially as you say that it only occurs sporadically. I've only exprienced complete stylus failure once and the tipless stylus would simply skate to the center of the record. It really sounds like something's limiting the free travel of the arm. But other than some kind of external obstruction (which would be easy enough to see) I can only think that the bearings might be binding, though you should be able to fee this if you gently move the tonearm to the spindle by hand. Do you have a spare cartridge lying around? If so, I might be worth throwing it on. At the very least you could eliminate one factor.
Also check the arm lifter to make sure the arm tube has clearance.
Henry
Thanks, Henry. As it plays right now, there's clearance for the arm tube. I'll check again if the drag back thing happens again.I've lowered the anti-skate to ~1.5 (the calibrations are odd on a Rega). Do I need to lower the VTF to correspond?
I have heard that on Regas (I own a P5) the the AS should be half of the VTF. Don't know the reasoning. I do have MF's turntable setup DVD but have yet to watch. On my P5 my VTF is 1.7g & AS = 1g. No problems so far.
This could well be right. On my Michell TecnoArm (a modified RB250)the optimum anti-skate is between 1/2 and 1/3 the VTF. Why Rega "calibrates" thus is beyond me.Additionally the VTF scale provided by Michell on the TecnoArm is also well out - rare for them and their usual precision engineering. A stylus gauge is strongly recommended.
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