Set-Up Accessory Reviews

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Michael Fremer  |  May 27, 2021  |  12 comments
Someone on one of the Facebook turntable groups asked what "overhang" was. None of the answers that I read properly defined it, (though a few talked about the head shell slots being involved) and I've forbidden myself from ever again participating on any of those groups after being called a "liar and a bullshit artist" in response to one innocent comment I made and "an industry puppet" following another.

Michael Fremer  |  Mar 19, 2021  |  34 comments
While the name "shaknspin" may sound like a child's toy, the device is anything but, though it does make child's play of measuring turntable speed, calculating wow and flutter, jitter and more, graphically representing speed variations as histograms by frequency and speed distribution and even mo
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 11, 2020  |  55 comments
Well, that’s a clickbait headline for sure, but unlike most it’s probably true, especially if you’ve taken my word on this.

Michael Fremer  |  Aug 02, 2020  |  47 comments
Skating, a pivoted tonearm’s tendency to “skate” towards the record center is real, is not created by “centripetal force” and is not best ignored because compensating for it somehow worsens sonic performance.

If you do not apply some kind of skating counterforce, the stylus will ride the inner groove throughout the record side, producing uneven record and stylus wear. And it can’t possibly improve record playback sound.

Michael Fremer  |  Apr 21, 2020  |  13 comments
WAM Engineering's new universal WallyTractor is now available from the newly formed company, a partnership between the late Wally Malewicz's son Andrzej, himself a mechanical engineer and Wally's former production assistant J.R. Boisclair. They've just launched the Wallyanalog website where you will find complete details of the new $395 universal WallyTractor and the available services the Santa Rosa, CA based company provides.

Michael Fremer  |  Mar 15, 2020  |  24 comments
Revolv has sold a lot of these useful vertical tracking force gauges. To the best of their knowledge—and they know their stuff—they are not magnetized. Yet the one I got surely is as you can see in the video below (there's no sound).

Michael Fremer  |  Aug 26, 2018  |  8 comments
Minimizing inter-channel crosstalk maximizes channel separation and helps produce a maximally wide and balanced soundstage. Azimuth is a critical cartridge set-up parameter.

Many if not most gimbaled-bearing tonearms don’t allow for axial tilt adjustment to set azimuth.

With arms that do, unipivot or gimbal bearing, physically making sure the head shell is parallel to the platter or setting cantilever perpendicularity using a mirror, does not insure correct azimuth setting just as an arm parallel to the record does not assure correct SRA/ VTA.

Michael Fremer  |  Mar 02, 2014  |  38 comments
Looking for a good digital stylus force gauge? Once upon time one from Winds cost $800 and was good only to a single digit. Today they can be had good to 3 decimal points for as little as $79 like this Audio Additive by Musicdirect®. Like most today it is made in China.

Michael Fremer  |  Aug 09, 2012  |  24 comments
Maybe you don't want to spend a few hundred dollars on a digital USB microscope because that's more than you spent on your phono cartridge in the first place?

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