This next entry in my Turntable Setup Guide is for those of you who read Part 1, have successfully installed your cartridge and have been playing records and reaping the benefits of your handwork. If you have not yet read Part 1 of this guide, I’d recommend starting there before continuing with Part 2 below.

Now that you’ve installed your cartridge and are enjoying the hell out of your records, you might be asking yourself, “it sounds pretty darn good already, do I really need to do more tweaking?” At least that’s the question I’ve asked myself, more than once.

There is a chance that you’ve got your turntable set just right already. In my experience, it is a very remote chance. Almost certainly, it can be improved. So if you want to try to make your turntable and the records you’re playing on it sound even better than they do now, here are some things you can do to make that happen.

Set the Azimuth

Azimuth adjustment can be approached on two levels – a macro and a micro. On the macro level, azimuth adjustment is setting the angle of the the cartridge body exactly parallel to the record surface when your stylus is sitting in the record groove. On the micro level, by far the more important of the two, azimuth is the angle of the stylus itself to the groove.

Obviously the macro level is the one we can see easily without any magnification. The micro, on the other hand, requires significant magnification to observe, more than is really practical for most of us.

However even without strong magnification, we can still get a very accurate azimuth adjustment on the micro level adjusting it by ear. I will give a detailed approach to adjusting azimuth by ear in the upcoming Turntable Setup Guide Part 3.

For now, even though the micro level of azimuth adjustment is really the one that counts, adjusting it on the macro level can still yield excellent results.

Not all tonearms have an adjustment for azimuth. If yours does not, you have two options. The first is to trust that the azimuth setting you’ve got is close enough to optimal already and just forget about it. The second option will be described a little further below.

Begin by looking at the headshell carefully while the stylus is sitting on a record. If you bought the Azimuth / VTA block I recommended in Turntable Setup Guide Part 1, place it in front of the cartridge / headshell on the record surface (be sure to use a record you don’t care about for this).

Use the lines printed on the block to see if the cartridge body is perfectly parallel to the record surface. If they are not, and you have the ability to change the azimuth setting on your tonearm, rotate the tonearm in the appropriate direction until the cartridge appears perfectly parallel to the lines on the block. If you don’t have one of these blocks, get one as they’re cheap and super helpful. Then in the meantime, make the cartridge body as parallel to the record surface as you can by eye.

If the cartridge does not appear level to the record surface and your tonearm does not have the ability to change azimuth, you have the option (option 2 from above) of adjusting it the way that Peter Ledermann at Soundsmith describes in this link or in the explanation below:

“One may cut two fine strips of business card, about a quarter the width of the cartridge, and place them on top of one another, and then on top of the cartridge, running FRONT TO BACK to create a pivot or fulcrum. Then, by alternately slightly tightening and loosening each of the mounting screws a tiny bit each, one may “tilt” or rock the cartridge as viewed from the front to achieve a slight azimuth adjustment, which should be all that is required, to achieve top performance. When the proper point is found, tighten both screws by the same amount to “lock” the setting in place.”

Note: I have not tried using a business card shim as described above to adjust azimuth. If you decide to try it, let me know how it works out in the comments, would you? Thanks!!!

Adjust the anti-skate

Anti-skate or bias adjustment has got to be the turntable adjustment enjoying the least amount of consensus on how it ought to be done. If you noodle around online, you’ll find several ways of adjusting your anti-skate, most of which are not very good.

I’ve managed to find 2 very good ways of setting anti-skate accurately. The first way requires that you have a Triplanar U2 tonearm and are using a Dynavector Karat 17dx cartridge with the VTF set at 1.8 grams.

While I realize the likelihood of anyone reading this having these exact pieces of equipment is small, in the very unlikely event that you do have a Triplanar U2 and a 17dx, just set the anti-skate at the lowest amount possible using the smallest weight that came with your Triplanar and placing it on the bar as close to the tonearm pivot as possible.

For everyone else, the only way I’ve found to accurately set your anti-skate is to use a WallySkater from Wam Engineering. These are not cheap, but they do work extremely well. I don’t own one myself but I was able to borrow one from the lending library of the Audiophile Foundation, located here in the S.F. Bay Area.

I used the WallySkater to set the anti-skate on both of my turntables with great success. If you live in the Bay Area and are not already a member of the Audiophile Foundation, you might consider joining and borrowing their WallySkater. They have a WallyTractor available for loan as well.

It is also possible to set anti-skate by ear, albeit a little tedious and time consuming. I will address setting anti-skate by ear in Part 3.

Set the VTA

VTA or Vertical Tracking Angle is the angle at which our cartridge’s cantilever sits relative to the record surface while we are playing a record. Every cartridge has an optimal VTA, and for the most part, we are at the mercy of the manufacturer of our cartridge to build it in a way such that when we have our tonearm perfectly parallel to the record surface, the cantilever is at the optimal angle and we therefore have the optimal VTA for our cartridge.

Unfortunately, cartridges are very often not built in a way that optimizes VTA when our arm is set at the right height. Some don’t place the cantilever even close to the optimal position. This is due to both design flaws in cartridge as well as wide tolerances in their manufacture. As a result, most of us are forced to accept to a large extent whatever VTA we end up when our tonearm is level to the record surface (covered in Turntable Setup Guide Part 1.)

In a way, this is not such a terrible thing. It’s one less parameter to worry about, and even when VTA is not perfect, many if not most of our records can still sound excellent. This is especially true if we have excellent sounding records to begin with, and when we’ve gone to the trouble and expense of setting our anti-skate and azimuth properly.

There may be some of you who find that tweaking the anti-skate and azimuth as I describe above are enough to hear a substantial improvement in the sound of your records. This improvement may even be big enough that you won’t feel the need for further tweaking.

But for some, even excellent sound may not completely satisfy. Having heard record after record sound achingly natural, remarkably free of distortion, shockingly real and with the unmistakable energy of live music, I find even excellent sound is a bar set too low.

For those of you who are like me and simply unable to settle for anything less than astonishing, stay tuned for my next entry into this series, Turntable Setup Guide Part 3, where I will further discuss VTA, azimuth and anti-skate and how to dial each of them in by ear.