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Re: ROY GANDY Fact Sheet On VTA Interesting read

Hi Duane,
In the following discussion please bear in mind that a product weakness is not necessarily a fatal flaw. All products have compromises and those built to a budget tend to have more. The compromises in the Rega work out quite well for a lot of people and produce a pretty recent sound. I think that this is similar to what what KT88 is saying. What irritates me is when marketers try to tell me that an obvious compromise does not exist.

In the case of the Rega's lack of facility for easy adjustment the angle of the cartridge, he has apparently chosen to cloud the issue by addressing it as VTA adjustment and point out that VTA of cutter heads varies considerably (Cloud the issue with largely irrelevant truth). The topic he has chosen to avoid is Rake Angle. Rake angle addresses how the stylus (or cutter head) fits into the groove and affects the ability of an elliptical or line contact stylus to trace the same path as the cutter head. If you do a search for "Rake Angle", I think that you will find a broad consensus that rake angle is far more important than VTA. While the VTA of cutters may vary over a wide range, rake angles are generally as close to vertical as possible while still allowing chips to clear during the cutting operation (Generally about 2 deg. In other words, while it may not be practical to match the VTAs of cutter heads, it is certainly practical to match the rake angles reasonably closely and this is more important (except for a spherical tip stylus).

Another point is that its not valid to imply that if you don't want to adjust for every record, you shouldn't adjust at all. Macro adjustment on basic set-up to get close to the right range; occasional adjustment to compensate for a VTF change or the effect on the suspension of break-in or season; and adjusting for each record are very different things.

I would level similar criticism at the "no antiskating" argument. That argument could possibly be rephrased. "As the perfect antiskating force varies slightly across the record, its only easy to solve 80% of the problem, therefore you shouldn't do anything at all!" Of course, if you state it this way, it becomes obvious that this argument is pretty silly.

Regards
David


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  • Re: ROY GANDY Fact Sheet On VTA Interesting read - energyandair 02/12/0519:43:27 02/12/05 (1)


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