Thread by @bauhiniacapital

If there were anyone out there who wanted to install/attach a tonearm onto a Technics SL1200 or SL1210 turntable... because for whatever odd reason they were shipped separately...

Be careful.

As consumer audio objects not meant to be dismantled, they require a little care.

Assuming the thing has been shipped to you correctly (and most pros are OK at this), and it needed to be broken down (which it usually does not, if packed correctly, but would ultimately be safer)...

then, the install is relatively straightforward.

Underneath the turntable

Remove the platter so it shows a "naked" frame with a hole where the tonearm goes.

Then flip it over, putting the tonearm hole at the upper left, and put stacks of books under the upper right, lower right, and mid-lower left, leaving the hole for the tonearm, and the space

towards the front empty.

Once upside down, there are four footers which need to be removed. Take those off. Then a plastic "underbody" which has something like 20-24 screws holding it to the bottom. Take those all out and put them in a teacup.

Underneath that there is another shell with 10-12 screws in it.

The two sets of two at the back (top) are for the hinges and you can ignore those.

The other 6-8 have to be taken out. Use another teacup.

Get your tonearm assembly, make sure the arm-latch is over the tonearm and everything else is not loose, and turn it upside down in your left hand with the armwand facing towards your body.

Carefully. Tonearms shouldn't be bashed around. They're like eggs. You could throw them,

but if one doesn't catch them carefully, they are goners, so don't.

The whole thing is sensitive/delicate (and the reason why I don't buy ex-DJ turntables, ever, unless I plan on replacing the bearing and the arm bearings).

Anyway... then you feed the cable mechanism from the

underside through the hole, and you should have three screws which come with the arm. Those three screws attach the tonearm at 10 o'clock, 2, and 6 (assuming the hole is at upper left). Then you attach the tiny short wire to the screw just 'below' (towards the front) which

attaches to the tiny circuitboard which is behind the fader mechanism, and leave the rest (right/left, earth).

Then you put the first plastic back on (feed the cables through the hole) with those 6-8 screws in teacup #2, then the original underbody plate with the 20 or so screws

from teacup one, and then screw the footers back on.

Then flip it over carefully.

Believe it or not, now you're done (put the platter back on).

Install the cartridge in the headshell as straight as you can, then install the headshell. Assume you will need to make fixes to that install.

Cartridge alignment is its own thing. Your turntable may come with what is called a "tonearm protractor" or "cartridge alignment

protractor, but if it does not, you can go to a website called vinylengine.com and find one to print out on a printer. Cut a hole with an exacto knife, and I'd look for a video on youtube to talk about cartridge alignment.

The gist is that as the tonearm slides through the groove (there's only one, but it's quite long), the tonearm goes from the outside of the record to the inside of the record, tracing an arc. You want the stylus to have the absolute minimum amount of "tracking error" (yes, it's a

thing in vinyl playback) as possible to reduce playback distortion.

That means the distance between the stylus tip and the tonearm pivot should be super-exact. Different cartridges align the cantilever (that super-delicate pointy thing) and stylus (the tiny diamond at the end)

at different points within/under the cartridge body, so the alignment should be done every time you mount a cart.

It should be mounted so the stylus hits the paper at the correct distance AND that it is as perpendicular to the arc traced as possible. Then you tighten the

headshell screws.

Ideally, you also want to get a VTF scale (vertical tracking force which is a tiny scale measuring the "weight" of the cartridge as it touches the record.

No connection whatsoever. This is a random cheap one off AMZN: amazon.com/dp/B08DLJ676B/…

Your cartridge will tell you what the VTF should be. It is usually between 1.5 and 2.5 grams. After you have installed the cartridge on the headshell on the tonearm, then you make sure the VTF is correct. The adjustment to make sure the VTF is correct is made by moving the

counterweight at the back of the tonearm. Move it slightly back to reduce the weight on the scale. Move it slightly forward to increase the weight.

All this assumes that the cartridge purchased matches the tonearm. If you are buying a Technics SL1200, most moving magnet carts

should be within the realm of appropriate compliance.

Now I am going to go a bit wonky.

The MM cartridge is a body, with a set of coils, pole pieces (not shown here), and a magnet attached to the cantilever, which sits in a suspension (think of a rubber gasket) which holds

the cantilever in a straight line. As the cantilever tracks through the groove, bouncing around back and forth and up and down, it moves the magnet, inducing an electrical signal into the coils which then passes back out through the wires to the phono stage then the preamp and

the amplifier.

The suspension is the combination of the flex in the cantilever (aluminum is less rigid than boron or titanium), but mostly the suspension material. A "high compliance" cartridge will have very soft suspension material, and a "low compliance" cartridge will have

harder suspension material. If you have harder suspension material, you need more effective mass to ensure a "neutral" amount of mass to counteract the stiffness of the suspension.

If you have a softer suspension inside the cartridge, you need less "effective mass" to offset

that lack of rigidity. The Technics SL1200/1210 tonearm has effective mass in the range of 12 grams if you use the Technics headshell. If you use a heavier headshell, or a heavy cartridge, you can add a fair bit more, but generically, many/most MM carts will work on a Technics

SL1200/1210 tonearm.

So all that was a warm fuzzy aside for those of you who needed to get away from family this late in TG weekend.

Once the counterweight is in the position to give you the proper VTF for your cart, you are all set to go.

Enjoy.

Note, once set up, you should be good for quite a long time. If you have gunky records, clean them. If you don't, you will end up with gunk on your stylus. That can be taken off by buying some Mr Clean Magic Eraser (I kid you not).

It's a small super small cell sponge...

with intensely tight tangles which will abrade the stylus face/surface and remove the gunk. Lower the cart into the sponge, then raise it back out. Do it a few times. Check with a cheap plastic magnifying glass. Should clean easily. Don't scrape side to side.

That's it.

You can also use silly putty, or a very soft very sticky solid polymer which can be found on Amazon too for relatively cheap. you lower the stylus in, and the surface area of the silly putty or polymer adheres to the gunk more than the gunk adheres to the stylus.

And as a postscript... this is not complete cartridge setup. There are a number of parameters which should be optimised.

The problems are manifold.

The Technics helpfully is designed to fit in exactly the right place. All you have to do is put the cart in correctly.

That assumes the cart meets the specs. There are weird anomalies when one deals with such small things. When the cartridge is new, the stylus will sit at a different vertical tracking angle than when it is broken in. It may change with temperature and humidity.

If the stylus rake angle is incorrect, one can raise or lower the tonearm against the tonearm base to change it a couple of degrees.

Next, the stylus itself is usually embedded into the cantilever. It isn't always done perfectly. That means the angle of the stylus could end up

not being parallel to the cantilever. If your cart has a conical or elliptical stylus like at the left of the left photo, your issues are mostly with rake angle and whether it is vertical to the record.

If it is is an elliptical microline or shibata (right two on left photo),

you need to also check if it is mounted so that the cross-section (shown in the middle row of the right hand pic above) is perpendicular to the cantilever which is parallel to the headshell alignment. This is a PITA.

Good cartridge alignment gets you MUCH better sound quality

out of your records than simply sticking the cart on the end and having at it. If your VTF is measurably off, your frequency response curve will not be like the music, and there will be distortion. Get your VTA or azimuth off and you will have other distortions. They all add up.

If you are just getting into vinyl, take some time to learn about proper cartridge setup. There are websites and YT vids on this all over the place.

The difference can be dramatic.