I recently got a Technics SL-J1 turntable (tangential tonearm), and I'm now trying to get it working correctly. Now, when I play discs, I sometimes hear a distortion in loud parts not completely unlike clipping. You can get a sample here (the LP should be in mint condition).

I've tried adding a small weight to the tonearm to increase the tracking force, because I read that these distortions might by caused when the needle is not pressed strongly enough against the vinyl. It did seem to reduce the problem, see the second sample here.

Should I just increase the weight until the problem disappears? Or might I damage the vinyl because of too high pressure?

Cartridges come with specifications for recommended and maximum tracking weight. The recommended is the neighborhood of where you can generally expect the best results; the maximum is that which, when you exceed it, damage starts.

There are a number of other cartridge and tonearm parameters. Any of of them being off will produce poor quality playback.

Attached to the second post here
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....mp;#entry540058
is your first sample after some declicking. Does this address your complaint with the recording?

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That’s an oldie! It may be malfunctioning, or it may be simply that the needle is worn out. The unit you have on hand is a 1984 / 1985 model year product. This makes it more or less 23 years old. If that’s the original needle (or even the second replacement!), I'd throw out a wild guess that a new needle would work wonders. You should be able to pick up a replacement needle for less than $30.00 or so.

Here is the TT's manual:

http://www.vintagetechnics.stereomanuals.c...ables/index.htm

Here is another link with general data about the TT

http://www.vinylengine.com/library/technics/sl-j1.shtml

Here is a Technics User's Forum:

http://technicsforum.com/Main/index.php

Andrew D.
www.cdnav.com


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The needle is new, I've bought a replacement that only arrived yesterday, because the old one was broken.

I just checked, the recommended weight is 1,8g. I'm pretty sure I can figure out a good way to measure that.

Thanks, but I think it's best to try to get the best quality from the turntable first, so that I have to do less restauration afterwards. Also, too small weight can damage the vinyl as well as I've read, and I certainly don't want that.

I'll check the weight and tell you how it went.

Ok, I tried to determine the tracking weight with a block of sticky notes, a kitchen scale (1 gram resolution), and a ruler (edit: and of course a calculator). My result was 1,25 grams, but it might be off a bit because of the measurement method. Since I didn't find an easy way to correct the weight, I sellotaped a few small lead weights to the tonearm. The resulting sample is here. I'd call it a success