Micro Seiki MA-202/Technics 1210 troubles..

[walkthenight]

Equipment: Micro Seiki MA-202, Ebony armboard, Jelco OP-S Straight DIN cable (temporary tonearm cable to test the tonearm).

I have been having troubles setting up my Micro Seiki MA-202 regarding two things

1. The alignment of the tonearm base compared to the ebony armboard:
The alignment of holes of the arm base are slightly off compared to the armboard, this means that you can not fit more than one bolt at the same time.
The holes of the armboard are about 2mm closer (as a result the other two holes are only half visible if you fit one bolt).
This can be easily fixed by drilling new/larger holes, but it still puzzles me a bit.
I know Steve has made quite a few armboards for Seiki arms so it might be might that something is up with the tonearm base itself.
It looks like a Seiki part to me, but I don't know, maybe it comes from another model or so? Perhaps someone with more knowledge can shed some light on this..

http://imgur.com/a/phF8A

2. connection:
Being unable to set up the tonearm I still wanted to check the tonearm,
I plugged in the arm with a Jelco OP-S cable and gently tapped the needle of an not-to-fragile ortofon concorde cartridge.
I got a signal but only on the right channel of my headphones, I then switched to another cartridge of the same type and
This time the sound was almost inaudible but on both channels.. Both carts works alright on the stock arms and the tonearm
looks minty with very clean connections. Will try to get some instruments and measure tomorrow..
The tonearm was sold as tested and in working condition and is returnable.

Any help or advice would be most welcome, I have only used stock tonearms before and never tinkered around much.



Sorry about the editing, it's been a long day.. :zzz:

[phonomac]

Hello Julian,
The base certainly looks like the correct VTA-on-the-fly base for the MA-202. As a check, the distance from the centre of the arm hole to the centre of one of the mounting holes should be 22mm.

The connector in the arm pillar on the MA-202 seems to be quite sensitive to which plug it is mated with. If you have a search for MA-202 on the forum there is at least one thread where a new cable solved the connection problem.

regards

Angus

[337alant]

Julian
The pivot to spindle distance of the MA202 is 222mm same as the rega but I found that the holes in a rega armboard still didnt line up properly for the MA202 so I redrilled mine under the collar so they didnt show.
They are a very nice arm and look good on the techy

thread link
http://theartofsound.net/forum/showthread.php?32774-Micro-Seiki-MA202-on-a-techy&p=559080#post559080

Alan

[helma]

I've found surprisingly big differences in the thickness of the pins & connectors of old japanese arms and cables, to the point not every cable I have even fits every arm, while some cables with some arms are quite loose. So making sure the cable fits well would be the first thing to check out as already pointed out by an earlier poster. Also sometimes the pins inside the headshell slot in the arm get tarnished over time and make poor contact, it might seem to work fine but then other times when you swap / remove & reconnect the headshell it doesn't get good contact.