Just this morning I got an email from my friend and TBR contributing author Alex Bunardzic. You may have read Alex’s recent article about having his beloved Denon DL-103 cartridge modified and rebuilt by Andy Kim at The Needle Clinic.
Alex wanted to tell me about some help he got dialing in the set-up of the modded DL-103 on his turntable and how dramatic a difference it made it the sound of his system:
Hi Robert,
Mike came over to my house last Sunday and spent more than three hours fine tuning my turntable. He did a lot of adjustments, most importantly the goal was to set my SRA at or near 92 degrees. Mike used his sophisticated magnifying gear to work carefully on the SRA by adjusting the tonearm and fine tuning the cartridge.
Man, what a stunning improvement! Everything opened up. Amazing bass! Insanely present mids! Sparkly supple delicate highs and a deep soundstage! Music just came to life in front of us! I think Mike was also blown away, almost like he’s never heard such sound before. He was beaming with happiness and still talks about it.
I am flabbergasted. The only bummer now is that some of my LPs that I thought sounded good, even great, now sound like shit. Unlistenable!
How to explain that phenomenon? Subpar pressings?
Cheers!
I’m always glad to hear that a friend and fellow audiophile has succeeded in finding his way further forward in this nutty hobby. In this case Alex, with the help of his friend Mike from Ventus Audio in Vancouver, BC, clearly had made some substantial progress.
Alex and I email each other regularly. This email, as his emails often do, got me thinking. I wrote him back to share some of my thoughts:
Hi Alex,
First of all, how fortunate you are to have a friend with Mike’s skills who is so generous with his time and expertise! I could use a Mike down here!
Also, it seems like you’re getting an awful lot of value out of that DL-103 mod / rebuild. Clearly that was money well spent!
Depending on what system improvements you can make going forward, get ready to discover that even more of the records you thought you liked, you actually don’t. It’s happened to me so many times now I’ve lost count.
A better sounding analog system is one that is better at revealing the strengths and weaknesses of the records it plays. Since most records don’t sound all that great to begin with, this is bad news for most of your records. On the other hand, it’s great news for the records you have that are good as those will sound even better.
One thing to consider – I’m not sure how many records Mike used to do the set up, but clearly he dialed in the arm height just right for certain records. That height, however, is not ideal for every record. So while you have records that clearly sound great at the current setting, I guarantee you also have some that will sound even better with the arm a tad higher or lower.
Would those records that like a different arm height sound so bad as to be rendered unlistenable at the current arm height? I seriously doubt that. But this is the argument for having an easy way of adjusting the arm height (VTA, SRA) on a tonearm. If a record doesn’t sound quite as good as you know or think it can, you simply raise or lower the arm a little to see what height suits it best.
Thanks for the update!