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In the Forum: Audio For Dummies ™
In the Thread: Do not touch that used tonearm!
Post Subject: Do not touch that used tonearm!Posted by Romy the Cat on: 1/30/2007
It is fashionable among audio people to play with this analog, rewiring tonearms for instance. It always astonished me how masochistic this ceremony is and how many people dive into it completely voluntary.
Ok, let me explain you something. In MC analog setups one of the greatest virtues is “ageing” of the setup. MC works at fraction mV with ultra-ultra low currents. Therefore cables and connectors that care signal have very difficult time to be formatted (break-in) as there is no current in there. Many types of cables can not be formatted by excessive current and they must be broken-in only with the current that they will be caring, latterly the signal current. For most of the cases with this ultra low current it takes 1000-2000 hours unit analog begin to sound more or less none-aggressive and noted become “connected”.
Most of the analog setups that I have heard out there were too raw. The cables are too rough and too coarse and the phonostages were too “uncooked”. (With phonostages is another story as they must not be “formatted” by any non-RIAA source – otherwise you will loose bass for many weeks)… The 2000-3000 hours that analog setup need to “age” is too long time for 20 minutes records and most of the people do not go into hassles to fascinate a propose substrate analog pre-formatting. (Although it is not complicated)
So, the moral of this message: if you got that heavily used tonearm from eBay then … say thanks to God that it was…. heavily used. Mount it and play it. Sure, you might order a set of new cables for this tonearm. However, be advised that in 90% your cable will be worst that you already have in there. If you feel that you put a new set of wirers in your arm and instantaneously the sound become “better” then you need seriously to reevaluate your reference points because all the you juts head with your new wires was the sound of … a brand new BMW with sport suspension and low profile wheels rinning across those bumpy Massachusetts roads....
Rgs,
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