[78-L] Got the 78 system kludged together...

[Michael Biel]

From: Mike Shaffer <mkshffr at yahoo.com>

> The head shell on the GE tone arm on my TD-124 was the wrong size
> for my newly acquired RPX triple play 

Is it really a GE branded tone arm mounted on a Thorens?  Did you do
that or did someone in the past?  I never really liked the RPX, but
always used a lot of VR II's.  Does your triple play mechanism allow for
the use of the insertable slide-in styli?  RPX didn't have that during
the time of its production, and users had to replace the T in later
years in order to be able to use the slide in tips.  The tips are
smaller than the VR II tips and can be fit into a VR II in an emergency
but not vice-versa.  


> My ghetto head shell was a bit on the light side so I was only
> able to get about 5 grams. It sounded fine but sometimes it
> skittered about a bit in the runout grooves so I suspect it
> would like another gram or two.

I usually ran a VR II with 3 grams, so I suspect your arm is not
properly balanced, set for anti-skating properly, or not running
horizontally freely enough.  But also, don't set the arm to be able to
track the lead out grooves because they often are too fast for modern
arms to track if you are running light for the audio grooves.  

> But we proved that the cart works so I can start looking for
> a proper head shell. Now go t to get the tube amp finished. :)
> mike

Also, are you sure that your cart has one LP tip and one 78 tip and not
two LP tips?  One of the other reasons I liked the VR II was they sold
both a 2.5 and a 3.0 in addition to a 1.0, and we could get diamonds or
sapphire on any of them.  I think in later years there was a 0.7 as
well.  The problem was that only GE themselves used the proper damping
neophrene rubber, which was black and dense.  All the other brands used
a light tan rubber that was not proper.  Once GE stopped making the
replacements themselves, it was never the same.

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com