Pennies on headshells - good idea?

jsmith89

Hmph..... silly...
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Doing this with one of my headshells to give it a bit more sturdiness, does it wear the needle at all? Could do with doing the same to the other side
 
it depends on a whole number of things. First, what carts are you using? you should look at the recomended tracking weight for them, and set them up accordingly. Most additional cart weights are 2gs and a penny weighs 2.26gs. So i would say its a bad idea. it will wear both the needle and the records if you have too much pressure!
 
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Not a good idea really mate.
If you haven't already Set the correct tone arm height, find your floating zero point then set counterweight as recommended by your stylus and you should be fine without any extra weight.
 
Adding a penny will ruin your needle/s and wear your vinyls very quickly.

Almost all good needles give you the tracking weight to use on the instructions in the box, just set up your counterweight right when you first set it up and your laughing!
 
so no basically then, thanks guys. although i seem to remember putting it on in the first place because the needle would occasionally skate across the surface even on its right setting. maybe it's the weight unit itself
 
it could be the anti-skate isnt set correctly, or it could be youre using plastic TT's. They move a LOT more than any TT with a metal chassis when cueing.
 
so no basically then, thanks guys. although i seem to remember putting it on in the first place because the needle would occasionally skate across the surface even on its right setting. maybe it's the weight unit itself

Almost certainly anti-skate then mate, easiest way to set this up to use a one sided vinyl, put the needle in the middle of where the tune would be cut on the blank side (when playing at 45) and adjust the anti skate until the needle just stays wherever you put it on the vinyl. Makes a big difference if you've got tunes which like to jump about when your cueing them, as long as the tonearm weight is set correctly too!
 
Almost certainly anti-skate then mate, easiest way to set this up to use a one sided vinyl, put the needle in the middle of where the tune would be cut on the blank side (when playing at 45) and adjust the anti skate until the needle just stays wherever you put it on the vinyl. Makes a big difference if you've got tunes which like to jump about when your cueing them, as long as the tonearm weight is set correctly too!

brilliant! playing about with it now, just need to figure out what my headshell is and then i should just be able to adjust from there
 
brilliant! playing about with it now, just need to figure out what my headshell is and then i should just be able to adjust from there

What headshell you using mate? If it is a big brand (Ortofon Stanton etc.) then you can google it, majority Ive come across are +3.5g I think which is just the counter weight screwed all the way in, could be wrong on both counts though!
 
Bumping this as this system clearly isn't working, in the market for some top dollar needles. Ortofon pro so and shure m44 7s seem like the best options, can anyone vouch for either?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
Bumping this as this system clearly isn't working, in the market for some top dollar needles. Ortofon pro so and shure m44 7s seem like the best options, can anyone vouch for either?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

ortofon concordes have worked fine for me at home for ages, been fucked around and still sound great, think the little plastic things stops the needle getting scraped if it falls off the platter. think someone else has mentioned somewhere else on here though, playing out on traktor, kept getting a dodgy connection, only way to solve was to take headshell off and blow on the contracts in the tone arm.
 
ortofon concordes have worked fine for me at home for ages, been fucked around and still sound great, think the little plastic things stops the needle getting scraped if it falls off the platter. think someone else has mentioned somewhere else on here though, playing out on traktor, kept getting a dodgy connection, only way to solve was to take headshell off and blow on the contracts in the tone arm.

I had that problem. I now use Concorde needles with technics headshells
 
I've always used M44-7's and they're bulletproof.

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The Whitelabels are also worth looking at.
 
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