Cure Erratic Azimuth and Set Overhang/Tracking Angle on Well Tempered Arms

[sonddek]

Test - last effort was entirely wiped on submission, wasting a lot of my time, because of forum's stupid time-out setting. OK - I'll save every sentence now.

I've read that people have trouble setting consistent azimuth on Well Tempered arms. I had that problem when I bought my Amadeus. Setting azimuth at the beginning of the record meant that it would be wrong again at the end. The problem is that the horizon of the headshell and the horizon of the golf ball rotation are not parallel. The solution is to twist the arm wand in the golf-ball attachment hole, set the azimuth again by the normal method, and try again. Trial and error, and very small twists will allow you to arrive at a set up which does not have variable azimuth. It may be that this is achieved when the golf ball does not appear to be levelled at its harness. That doesn't matter, as long as azimuth is now constant across the whole record. WARNING: be very careful when twisting the arm wand as it is soft and easily bent. It can be bent back, but shiny fetishists will not be happy.

While we're at it, I've also seen complaint that the arm does not allow adjustment of tracking angle. Bill Firebaugh of Well Tempered and Roy Gandy of Rega seem to think that this doesn't matter very much. However, it is possible to change tracking angle by altering the length of the arm. The manual states the correct pivot to stylus distance in millimetres. When I collected my used Amadeus from a dealer, I found the arm length to be way off spec, so I recommend verifying that yours is correct. You can twist the arm wand and pull it or push it through the golf ball attachment to lengthen it or shorten it. This allows you to set the correct pivot-to-stylus distance to compensate for cartridges with outlying bolt-to-stylus distance, or even for a misaligned headshell. Since the golf-ball support also allows small changes in spindle-to-pivot distance, a certain lee-way in geometry and tracking angle is available.

[The Grand Wazoo]

Test - last effort was entirely wiped on submission, wasting a lot of my time, because of forum's stupid time-out setting. OK - I'll save every sentence now.

Richard, when you log in, tick the little box by the username and password details. That way, you're not going to be logged out after 15 minutes and it stays set for the device you sign in on until you physically log out. So if you just shut your window down, you'll already be logged in next time you open up AoS.

[sonddek]

Thanks Chris, good tip.