Something was not quite right a few weeks ago, and in trying to put it right I caused further problems. The Shelter 5000 is such a big cartridge compared with the AT33PTG that I simply ran out of arm height adjustment and could not attain the slightly nose-down attitude preferred by the Shelter. So I thought I would raise the arm mounting plate with spacers and bolt it all down again. Great - several mm higher and now I could get the VTA just right. I thought it sounded better, but it didn't really, just different. I kept subconsciously wondering where the detail had gone and why the sibilance seemed worse.

So tonight, armed with a sheet of Hobbycraft Fab Foam, I took the Dynavector and mounting plate off the deck. I first dismantled the two sections of the German custom made plate then hard glued and bolted them back together (in the same manner as my Mike New base plate is hard glued to the chassis because I never intend to return things to as-bought).

I then made two gaskets from the black foam sheet to the outline of the mounting plate, doubled them up and cut the three bolt holes through. Reassembly was straightforward except that this foam compresses and so I used a spirit level on the arm mounting column to ensure that the plate was totally level with the deck.

Remounting the arm was easy as height/VTA can be adjusted on the fly, so using my miniature spirit level on the headshell (these tiny bubble levels are so handy), I got everything perfectly level again. I did all this using the AT as I had been running it for a few evenings to eliminate the Shelter from the pointing finger of blame.

Wow - now my dynamics are back, upper midrange detail is restored and the sibilance is back down to normal levels. Everything sounds more solid again and the AT sounds dangerously close to the Shelter in sound quality (I maintain that the 33PTG is a superb cartridge with the right arm and step-up tranny).

One sheet of this is all it needed:



The moral of this tale is always to make one change at a time, leave an 'undo' path to put things back the way they were and be careful not to confuse 'change' with 'improvement'. I'm mighty relieved but also feel a moment!