Dodgy SPU quality and a tale of woe with an Ortofon RS-212D...
From an earlier discussion here: http://theartofsound.net/forum/newre...reply&p=269058
You won't believe it, Martin - what a bloody nightmare....Originally Posted by MartinT
What happened was that when my BRAND NEW SPU arrived the other day, I fitted it to the arm and immediately noticed that the cartridge was leaning badly to one side. Upon closer inspection, it turned out that this was because the fixed headshell's bayonet fitting was misaligned (and unfortunately there is no azimuth adjustment, to compensate, on the SPU's built-in headshell). So that of course meant that azimuth was completely out and that the cartridge was of bugger all use!
What seems to have happened was that, whoever at Ortofon had built the SPU, hadn't glued the bayonet fitting of the headshell on straight, when its position was being adjusted in the factory!!
Anyway, there was a little grub screw underneath the detachable headshell section of my new Ortofon RS-212D tonearm, which Simon (the dealer I bought the tonearm from) and I presumed would be for azimuth adjustment, in that loosening it would allow the plastic housing, holding the inner contact pins, to turn slightly so that I could then gently twist the headshell until it sat straight inside the arm.
Seems sensible, right??
Problem was, that the grub screw did no such thing - what it did was proceed to loosen the inner contact pins on the tonearm, so that when I next fitted a headshell to it, the pressure applied by doing so, pushed the pins flat inside the plastic housing, resulting in the contact pins on the headshell bayonet fitting no longer making contact with the inner ones of the arm, thus resulting in a complete loss of sound!!!
There was no warning whatsoever in the supplied owner's manual that that grub screw shouldn't be touched (a printed sheet, however, had been supplied warning of other 'no go' areas of the tonearm), or indeed any indication as to its function. Therefore, what happened was hardly my fault!
So now, because neither Mark (who kindly offered to have a look at it for me), or Simon, whom I returned the arm to yesterday, could fix it, driving some 400+ miles there and back to both their addresses in the process, it had to go back to Ortofon, who will now either fix it or supply a new tonearm - and the same goes with the SPU.
All that crap because Ortofon couldn't manage to fix the headshell housing straight on a not exactly inexpensive cartridge... As you can imagine, I'm bloody livid!! But hopefully, I should have both back next week and everything will be ok
I must stress though, that Simon (from HifiSound) has been very supportive and helpful about the whole thing. He's stayed late for me on both occasions when I've been to his shop, and always, as they say, 'gone the extra mile', in terms of his customer service, so I must thank him very much him for that. It's at times like this that you *really* appreciate the help and support of a good dealer, and not having bought instead from the likes of eBay!!
But, as you can imagine, I'm less than happy with Ortofon and I'll be watching very closely how they handle this. Clearly, their standards of workmanship and quality control need some working on!!!
The net result of this of course is that my T/T is now without an arm and cartridge for the Dominic's T/T bake-off in Preston tomorrow, so I'm not sure if I will be going...
Marco.
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