Ten Mistakes That Will Ruin The Sound Of Your Vinyl And How To Fix Them

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Great episode, thanks!

Vinylengine has some excellent tools including a cartridge/tonearm compliance chart, alignment tools that you can print off + lots of other interesting things all vinyl related

I built up a 50 pound Lenco 70 a while back. Fun project but eventually went back to normal tables. That was a pain trying to move around ha ha.

Great information thank you !! To anyone reading this have a good day!

VTA adjustment to also accommodate various thicknesses in platter mats should you want to change one as I've done so in the past. Very comprehensive list, professor, with each topic providing the springboard for those who want to delve deeper into the subject if desired.

1) unlevel platter
2) bad vibration,
3) wrong tracking force
4) antiskate wrong
5) crooked stylus
6) stylus is dirty
7) your records are filty- clean your records!!!

🙂 👌

Seeing a turntable on a speaker drives me crazy! Truly my pet peeve.

Great recommendations! I've done most of them (on the less than $1000 side) and they really make a difference in sound. Early on, you said, 'What really matters is the platter' - good T-shirt material, especially with a picture of an offset level. Good shoutout to LPGear too.

10 mistakes?
your first mistake is listening to digital perfect sources electromechanically engraved into plastic, a distortion process.
all vinyl since 1978 was digital at one point, and all of them are digital doday. someone else's DAC

I will add an eleventh mistake. I believe this very important. Have a second stylus on hand at all times . That is in new condition with only enough hours on it to be broken in. That way you can use it as standard to check the condition of your current stylus in use . There is so much contradicting info on stylus life. But if the new one sounds better especially if it by alot . Just use it instead and order a new one. This is why I still recommend a conical for the first set up for a beginner. The conical is inexpensive and will generally out last the same eliptical upgrade for that particular cartridge. The conical is just more forgiving to mistakes. I've never had a stylus last a thousand hours....period. I've been using line contacts for almost four decades. The last one went in 700 hours just like clock work.
Use your ears ... if something is off do a check. It won't hurt to do a periodic either , especially after three hundred hours and the about every hundred. The degradation in quality is slow and hard to notice. A diamond 🔹 isn't forever and does contain flaws . Sometimes it can change suddenly.
What you are listening for is mistracking in loud passages. Increased sibilance and noise. Remember the diamond isn't the only item that gets used up . There is also the elastomer in the suspension. Essentially a rubber tire. That can sometimes fail or just not adhere to the rode like it did with just a thousand miles on it.
So it is a mistake to upgrade out of your budget. Now you have tied yourself to a much more expensive stylus to replace. Like it or not the condition of the stylus is far more important than tracking force and shape of the contact patch..
So keep the record clean and the stylus in good shape and any record will sound the same after a hundred plays.

Pretty cool demo. "Can you hear me knocking?"

So I'm on the fence about the cart for my end game system. Its all the gear i lusted for as a young man. Currently i have an audio technica at33e elliptical stylus beryllium cantilever currently on the deck in question. looking to dethrone it are two denon carts a dl304 and a hot-rodded dl103. This cart has a microridge stylus. so the deck is my scrapolinn. basics are i built it from bits i bought off ebay and reverb the arm is an sme 4 with leads from cart to step up transformer. the sut has eliminated some of the other carts i have picked up over the years. I don't have any audiophile friends around close other than my nephew he's taking all my not going to use again sell it pyle. audiophile just sounds creepy... anyway curious to see what yall think about it.

Static - I miss the old ION gun my dad had.

To prevent warping your records, do not, I repeat, DO NOT store your records in your car in the summer. 😂😂😂

Your tonearm height looks like it's set too low for that AT cartridge. That might be why it was bottoming out.

Great video, I love vinyl and I love messing with stuff so turntable setup is just fun. You can spend a ton of money and disappear down the rabbit hole but you can also get great results without breaking the bank if you've taken the time to set everything up right. My favourite budget cartridge is the MP110, I have one fitted to an eBay turntable and a Schiit Mani phono stage, great sound and not too heavy on the pocket. I do have two other TT setups that cost a bit more 😁😁😁

Great video! Thanks. Adjusting anti-skate is really easy using a LaserDisc. Also, you can set the tone arm to 0 grams (so it floats level), move it to about center of a record and see if it moves in or out. Adjust anti-skate accordingly. 🙂

Hugh advantage of playing LP records on turntables is that listener learns about how to troubleshot problems and how mantain it's delicate system.

I think this is one of your best videos, indeed, one of the best on the topic. You are able to relate really well to to what might be termed the ‘occasional’ or ‘aspiring’ audiophile. You bring a common sense perspective to topics that others obfuscate with high-faluting language. I track an Englishman explaining cartridge compliance and tone arm mass for thirty minutes, and I didn’t know any more after he finished than when he started. I was impressed by his knowledge, and he introduced a lot of terminology with which I was not familiar, but he didn’t ‘splain it like you do. I also think you ordered your topics very well, starting with things we can fix right now before moving on to things we might want to fix next. I know you like your two phono amps, but there are a lot more out there. Also, there are significant differences between iterations of both moving magnet and moving coil (and moving iron) cartridges. I currently run a HO Sumiko Songbird, I’m curious about Sound Smith moving iron cartridges, Hana, and Grado cartridges as well. I wonder which would be better for my Music Hall mmf-5.3 belt drive turntable given my predilection to blues, jazz, and classic rock.
Loved the demonstration of the Pioneer’s suspended platter and tonearm; I’ve heard such tables are a bitch to set up (per The Audiophiliac Steve Gutenberg himself).

I realized that my RCA brush was dropping turds instead of cleaning. Then I didn't realize my anti static brush was losing bristles till I was trying to clean a brand new yellow record and could clearly see the black hairs dropping as I was trying to clean dust.

Mine is seeing the platter mat placed ridges up. The ridges are to create an air pocket between the mat and the platter not for decoration duh

Useful stuff 🎉