Set-Up Tips

Have we opened a digital can of worms recommending using a USB microscope to set SRA (Stylus Rake Angle)?

I just spoke with Soundsmith's Peter Ledermann. He confirmed that the contact patch is as seen in the above photo. But note that this is with VTF of zero. He made a few observations about this discussion we're having here on Analogplanet.com.

This was as close and sharp as I could get capturing a stylus image from the front with the Dyno-Lite 313.

In Part 1 we explained the importance of proper azimuth setup. Now, on to how to achieve it! While using a digital oscilloscope is the most accurate method, it also requires you to spend hundreds of dollars to buy one and then you have to learn how to use it. That's not really necessary for most analog devotees, and so we're not going to go into the details here. If you insist, you'll have to buy one and figure it out using the methodology that will be described, which is generally applicable to whichever way you choose to go.

The stylus rake angle is the angle the stylus’s “contact patch” makes to the record surface. If you have a relatively inexpensive cartridge with a spherical stylus you don’t have to worry about SRA because the contact area remains the same regardless of arm height. On the other hand, elliptical styli along with the more severe “line contact,” Shibata, Geiger, Ortofon and other long, narrow contact patch “cutting edge” (poor metaphor!) stylus profiles require careful SRA setting to perform as designed.