Never ending Hi Fi Pain - VTA adjust on Technics EP-250
No secret that I'm a big advocate of the Technics tonearm, on the fly vta system.
I find it superb when dialing in the cart sweet-spot during tonearm/cart set up.
It's the reason why I went with the Technics EPA-250 tonearm over other very good options, for my SP10 tt, as the carts I use tend to be very vta adjust sensitive in terms of set up and nailing their narrow sweet-spot window. Once in through, in my experience, the system audio replay is fantastic.
However, for the second time I've had to revisit set / redial in the sweet-spot via vta.
At first I didn't immediately realise that the vta adjustment had actually moved and put the loss of focus, splashiness, mid upper frequency lift, ear fatigue down to my speakers and/or maybe my new acquired tonearm cable, changing and bedding in.
Then one day I looked at the vta marker and noticed the red line marker was not where I remember it being when I'd set the vta, so I got to trying to dial it in again, something i hate doing and find takes a long time to get right.
Eventually as always I got there.
The music/sound over the past week or two has been again superb, even up to last night - excellent.
Today though, sound not right. I've looked at the red marker and the vta has definitely moved. I took a pic last time for reference, which also confirms.
After the first time, I happened to come across this https://db.audioasylum.com/mhtml/m.h...cs%2Bepa%2B100
This had crossed my mind before, as I didn't realise that whilst i was getting the Technics on the fly system, my EPA-250 and the expensive EPA-100 does not have the vta lock, which they added later to the tonearms on the 1200/1210's.
So bottom line is, the same ole, one step forward, two backwards, as always seems to be the case i'm finding in this game. I'm pi&&ed to say the least. obviously I cant/wont/dont play my system until I've mailed set up and it is sounding right, also, I really really cant be asked with trying to re-dial in, every few weeks or so, it is too time consuming and fatiguing.
I really didn't realise that the EPA-250 vta adjust doesn't lock, causing the arm pillar to sink, little by little with use. It's a lovely, quality arm but like so much in relation to vinyl / hifi, is flawed !
Not sure what I'm going to do, going forward, but fed up with it to be honest
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Originally Posted by karma67
