Hi:

How I can tell if the suspension of my cartridge is failing. What are the telltale signs?

I have newly acquired a Beogram 4002 turntable. When I received it the photo sensor in base of the tone arm which controls the lateral movement was out of alignment. When you press the needle descend, the arm would slide over before dropping.

With Martin's and other's advice I was able to correct the problem. To my eyes the deck now plays properly and the tone arm is consistently parallel to the sensor arm throughout the play.

To my ears however I do notice that LPs sounds grittier and raspier with a tinge of distortion when it plays towards the inner tracks of the LP. Interestingly I don't get a distortions on the high frequencies. Strings will sound fine, but electric guitars, drums and voices will sound less defined. I'm thinking perhaps that the arm is still out of alignment but the arms are near perfectly parallel and the stylus does not wobble left to right during play across the entire LP.

I'm wondering if this could be the sign of a failing suspension? At this point I should mention that the cartridge is a 20 EN and probably original. Perhaps the failure of the suspension is being aggravated by the higher velocities in the inner tracks?

I don't have another cartridge to experiment with. Any opinions or recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Derek


 

A bit of a toughie to answer as I've had a few cartridges with failed suspension all with different symptoms ranging from an inability to track correctly, horrible sound reproduction in one or both channels and off centre cantilver - excepting the last - all of which are difficult to pin down to the actual cartridge. I've even owned a MMC3 which would play perfectly well on a radial tracking (Beogram 5000) but sounded like a donkey cheese grating a cat when fitted to my tangential trackers (BG6500 & 9000). The only reason I could think of for this one was that the cantilever was pulled to one side on my 5000 and this kept the moving micro cross in the correct position whereas it is slighly stressed in the opposite direction on my tangentials as movement of the cartridge/tracking arm is part of the mechanics of  tracking system.

 The only real test that tells me it is the cartridge and not the turntable/amp is to try them on different "known" beograms (which I'm fortunate enough to own) as the symptoms are very much the same as can be caused by other problems.

Chris.