...picked up my gear today, so I'm going about setting everything up.

The problem that I'm running to is that I'm getting sound distortions. I'm thinking that this has to do with the balancing of my turntable arm for a few reasons.

First thing is that the distortions happen the most when there is bass (i.e. a beat), and not really present if at all during mids and highs of melodic sections. Also, the distortions sound sort of similar to if I lightly tap on the turntables, so I'm thinking that the distortions that I'm hearing are a result of the needle "bouncing" momentarily away from the vinyl each beat.

P.S. These aren't speaker distortions due to gain settings being too high, i'm hearing the distortions when monitoring through headphones, nowhere close to peaking on meters.

Any advice on this?

Thanks,

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do you know how to properly set your tonearm up? maybe your speakers too close to your tables.

...hi, no, I don't fully know about tonearm setup, and not using speakers.

After doing some experimentation, part of my problem seems to have been a piece of vinyl i was using. Any suggestions to a tonearm setup guide would be most appreciated.

Thanks,

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ok this is my input on the situation. first of all, assuming that your anti-skate and height adjustments are still @ default, i'd leave those alone for a minute. u might try adjusting the weight because that usually happens when there isn't enough weight to keep ur tone arm down, the little distortions u might be hearing is probably just the needle coming up off the record momentarily either because u hit the table that ur decks are on or because u moved the record or any number of reasons. try moving ur weight (closer to the bass of the tone arm) to add more weight and vice-versa to decrease weight, don't necessarily put it up all the way because unless necessary, ur just gonna wear out ur stylus quicker. i'm not 100% sure about anti-skate but i've been told that it is there to help keep the tone-arm from moving lets say if ur tables get bumped into (maybe it effects the resistence that allows the tone-arm to swivel back and forth from the outter edge of the record to the inside??) i dunno, but my decks were set on 2.5cm or mm or watever measure that is and they've been fine forever. the height adjustment, i'd just leave that as is, not really sure how this will effect anything, maybe if ur a scratcher u need the tone arm to at a greater angle thus the base can be set higher to angle the tonearm down at the vinyl but thats just a guess, mine is at zero i guess i don't remember cuz i never really look at it. now i could totally be wrong and each of these things (weight, height adjustment, anti-skate) may somehow all be related and there could be defined presets that work the best, but hell if i know about them, all i know is how my shit is setup and it works absolutely fine for me. good luck. also, are u hearing the distortions through your headphones? cuz if u are u could have some busted headphones or a fucked up headphone jack that is spitting out the low frequencies. if ur listenting to speakers, u may have something faulty on either ur master or record outs, or maybe somethign is wrong w/ the low EQ on that channel, does this happen on both channels? could be u didn't screw in ur cartridge all the way, many possibilities, go fuck around w/ ur setup some more and report back w/ any other problems, im sure someone can help. good luck.

Hi,

Here's an update on the situation. I'm blaming a bunch of this on the Technics manual.

The manual suggests that you adjust the tonearm balance so that the tonearm will more or less hover in mid-air if you let it go. Of course, this ends up being waaaaay too sensitive, so my needle (heck, the whole tonearm) was literally bouncing up and down, not making solid enough contact with the vinyl.

I've fixed the problem now by playing with the tonearm balancing wait, so now the arm tends to move downwards instead of floating. Only thing I'm concerned about, as you mentioned, is vinyl wear. I guess I'm supposed to calibrate to a happy medium, where there isn't too much downpressure, but landscape changes on the vinyl don't move the tonearm....

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DJ Kibon - August 2004

Last edited by DJ Kibon on Jan-19-2003 at 04:12

Refer to your catridges manual for how much weight you should put on your needles and if your not scratching you shouldn't go more than 2.5 and it should be fine. if it still skips add a little more weight otherwise leave it the way it is.

Basically you need to find how much weight you can put on the needles so it doesn't skip, the lower you put the better.

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hmm... good point about not using "too much" weight, i guess it can lead to skipping. ok, the other thing is that don't limit the amount of weight due to fear of vinyl wear because, well, i think thats a bunch of crap. now i guess in theory, vinyl wear due to pressure from a heavy needle dragging on it seems possible, but i mean come on, i think that its a little fair fetched to worry about ur vinyl actually being wore down. i'm pretty sure you will go through many many cartridges before u see any wear on ur records because of them. unless of course you are scratching ur records, that could be a different story, but even then i think u will not have to worry much about it because scratch records are meant to be scratched. under normal playing conditions, i think you should be free from vinyl wear unless u leave the record on and the platter spinning and then go to work and come back 8 hrs later, and even then, u will just have managed to wear down ur stylus to a little tip of crap and may have really fine tuned the center groove on that record.. hopefully ur needle doesn't jump the center groove and head straight for the label cuz then ur dog will be hearing an annoying sound produced from the stylus trying to read the name and artist off the label from the track u were playing (that was sarcastic for those that couldn't tell). im sure u will run across some pretty shitty quality pressing here and there, but unless u plan on getting stylus that are made out of either razor blades or sand paper, i wouldn't worry about vinyl wear at all. If i'm wrong about this whole vinyl wear issue, then every dj i kno (including myself) are just very lucky that we haven't experienced any sort of vinyl wear due to having too much weight on the tone arm.

...thanks for the comments.

I'm going to play around with the tonearm balancing a bit, and go from there. Just unfortunate that the bloody manual for the Technics turntables is outright wrong.

They have this little set of pictures, showing bad and good tonearm balancing. The "good" balance shows the tonearm sort of floating level by itself, but actually touching the vinyl properly is sort of important...

Now I just have to teach myself to beatmatch with turntables.

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DJ Kibon



Click below to download my most recent trance set:
DJ Kibon - August 2004

One more thing i forgot to mention.

If you are really worried about vinyl wear, make sure you change your stylus(needle) when you see it picking up a lot of dirt and shit off the records that means it is planting itself in the record which will prolly lead to wearing your record, therefore it means you need to buy new needles!

BTW this will not happen for quite a while but keep an eye for it.

If you search this Section, there was something good information about needles on this site.

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that could also mean ur records are fucking dirty, but yes, this is true. cuz even if u wipe ur records clean, u'll end up picking up shit and it sucks cuz if u get hella crap being dragged by the needle it sounds like static. i have this very problem, i can't really afford new needles so basically i've got no choice but to spin w/ my needles that are pretty close to non-existant. however, there is enough needle left to keep the tone-arm from sliding accross the record, which has happened to me before, theres basically not enough needle to actualy stay in the groove so the tonearm just slides across as if u were playing a blank side.