I was recently told my tone arms are set too heavy, but when I lower the weight to where it's been suggested... the needle won't sit in the groove, slides across the record!! and if I set it somewhere in between it skips, am I doing something wrong, should I replace the needles, or should I leave the weight where it is when it works for me.

MORE WEIGHT




by the way.....what kind of carts are you using.....and also what kind of turntables?

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i'm runnin a pair of 1210's with stanton 500 al2's, im gonna get shure 44g's in a couple weeks here... but so where i've got em is fine?
i was told theres some plastic thing that you put the headshell in to find out what height the tone arm should be, but i bought my decks used so i dont have one of those... dunno if that makes a difference

more weight....

put the auxiliary weight if necessary...

http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/...&threadid=19928

Thanks!

Make sure you know how to set the weight on your tonearm properly. Some people think they're doing it right, and in fact they have the weight on backwards or something equally dull. This could be your problem if it skips loads at the reccommended weight. (what were you recccommended, BTW?)

It was recommended that I the tone arm balanced with the headshell and everything on so that it just barely sits on the record, I haven't had the time to but I'm going to try what i saw on that other post about zeroing the weight when it sits balanced without the headshell, just haven't gotten to it yet.

Ah ha. Now I see what you're doing wrong.

You have got the first part right - getting the tonearm to be balanced so that it is completely level. But, after you do that, you then need to set the required weight, as that is zero weight.

Firstly, get the tonearm balanced like you did before. Then put the tonearm back in its rest and put the clamp on it. Turn the black plastic bit with the numbers on it round until it reads 0 (you shouldn't be turning the actual tonearm weight here). Once it is on 0, you can then set your desired weight. Turn the whole thing (numbers bit and the weight as well) around until it reads about 2.5, which is a fairly safe weight to be on. Then, set your anti-skate to the same setting as your tonearm weight.

Tonearm Height.
This should be set so that the bottom of the cartridge is parallel to the record while it is playing. If the needle goes in to the groove at an angle, it creates a kind of chisel effect, so if the tonearm is too high you get a chisel effect while playing forwards and if it's too low you get a chisel effect while backcueing/backspinning etc. Ideally, you should try and get the right height for the tonearm, but if in doubt always have it slightly too low, because the amount of time spent backcueing is clearly far smaller than the amount of time spent playing normally.

Hopefully you should now have a properly set up tonearm.

the cartridges i got came with a thing that said how high the tone arm should be set for proper use, should i just go with that?

If it is specified for 1200's then I think you can apply this note.