The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Edisone wrote:ps - This is exactly why Victor moved the motor/turntable to the right & altered the area of arm swing - moving the 'throat' of the horn would have been too costly, but it needed to be done as the early Orthophonics were grinding records to DEATH.

Do you mean the earlier Credenzas with the self-supporting tonearm mounted directly behind the turntable (below)? Just how bad is the offset/tracking error on the earlier ones? I haven't had the chance to actually check it myself.

As long as the reproducer swings into the spindle and the reproducer is parallel with the groove’s tangent plane where the needle sits then it shouldn’t matter where the tone-arm is positioned.

-My guess is that they moved the tone-arm to correct this alignment without having to modify the crook? They just needed to move it farther back so that the reproducer would line up with the groove tangent. Since there wasn’t room to go straight back it was shifted to the right or left side where there was room-I don't think it really matters which side.

Edisone,

"Changing your viewing position does NOT alter the distance between the arm's base and the turntable; moving it (in a straight line) to the right does."

That's exactly what I'm trying to say! Meaning, whether the arm appears to the right or left of the turntable, so long as you maintain the radial distance from the turntable to the arm's base, you've essentially got the same tracking.

So yes, you can move the arm laterally to the right for the best tracking. That results in a certain radial distance from the turntable. As long as that radial distance is maintained, it doesn't matter where the arm is mounted, even to the left.

coyote wrote: Do you mean the earlier Credenzas with the self-supporting tonearm mounted directly behind the turntable (below)? Just how bad is the offset/tracking error on the earlier ones? I haven't had the chance to actually check it myself.

credenza5.jpg

They were bad enough to require a recall & replacement of the crooks. My Credenza X still had the original, and the error was obvious even at a quick glance. I replaced it with a later crook, which I was told wouldn't fit the self-supporting arm, but it seems to fit just fine. It did make a difference in the sound quality, too. Funny - although I was thrilled to find a brass reproducer on it, the one from my 2-65 portable (with no 'spider') sounds quite a bit better, so I'm using that instead.

ps - My previous message strikes me as cranky; I didn't mean to be that way. Apologies for that!