Cantilever bent only on resting position, first time mounting a cartridge

Hi,

I decided it was time for me, after a year of having a turntable, to mount my first cartridge. Everything went well, I mounted a MM Nagaoka mp200 on a 9-inch carbon fiber tonearm of my Project perspex SB.

I spent a day refining the alignment making sure everything is bang on and I was quite happy and proud although today I noticed, the cantilever leans toward the left when it is resting and it recenters itself when it hits the platter or a record. is it normal?

This stylus is a replacement stylus I got 2 days ago as the previous Nagaoka I had played fine but the cantilever was skewed, Nagaoka agreed to exchange it, now... I am feeling, is it just normal to never have a perfect cantilever and just not expect perfection?

The music plays fine, I could pass the 3 trackability test on the HI-FI news without issues, The visual alignment with the 9 inches protractor included in the HI-Fi News is bang on, The azimuth was done with a block and is bang one, I also checked with a mirror and it is bang on, the VTA of the arm is higher than the parallel, I started parallel and raised small increments until the sound was satisfying for me, I balanced the arm and track at 1.85 grams (checked with a scale too). The anti-skate is on the 2nd notch, for a weight of to 2 grams.

I don,t recall any incident when I could have had contact with the cantilever, if it was bent, would it stay bent when in the contact position? I thought adding more anti-skate, I tried it, but the sweet sonic spot seems to be where it is.

Any advice would be helpful! As I mentioned, it is my first alignment.

here some pictures :

https://i.ibb.co/YZmKzrm/image-1.jpg
image-2
image-3

 

First, I can't see the images without clicking on the IMG tags and opening in another window, though looks like you added links now, better would be to link the image files with img tags around them, not the page they are on, that way they would show in your post. The image files have an extension like .jpg or .png.

Don't know what the first pic is, is it sitting on a surface, and so the grid you added shows it is now fairly straight?

The second one with the cartridge on the rest does appear to have a very slight skew, I don't know how well the Nagaoka stylus assemblies are normally aligned, but that one should work OK if the cantilever is aligned to the null point grids on a protractor. Sounds like you've got it set up pretty well for your first time, so good work!

The third one appears to be on a grid but it's not very clear, and not enough of the cantilever shown, so hard to say, but if you are happy with the alignment then should be OK. Normally you need to take it without flash to avoid shadows, kind of like the pic below of my AT-OC9XML while aligning it on one of the null point grids ...

The code block below shows the tags used to display the first image below ...

Code:

[img]https://i.imgur.com/h6ygIKr.png[/img]

 

Thanks for the picture tips, I struggled a bit to upload them. For the picture quality, I am sorry, I sadly lack equipment for the task. But thanks to your pictures I can see what you mean and, it is how I aligned the cartridge, and it all seemed fined and aligned when I did it, then I noticed the little skew towards the right (outward), so I thought, I must have misaligned it, I put back the protractor and realized the cantilever ''reshapes'' itself when it hits the platter... which seemed a little off to me, but I don't know enough about the cartridge mechanism.

About Nagaoka, They play well, it is my second MP-200 and I have to admit, for half the price, I enjoy it more than my Ortofon Quintet S Black (which was pre-mounted but had an awful sibilance issue, maybe it was badly mounted, but I didn't know how to align at the time and was scared to modify the alignment). Although my first Nagaoka played well, it also had a skewed cantilever, but it was different, the cantilever was straight line downward, but the cantilever was rotated 2-5 degrees to the left from the base. They agreed to do an exchange and I just received the replacement and I noticed the issue I described in the tread.

Thank you very much for the help! I think it is good then!

 

That's fine, I just use my old Samsung phone so don't have any special equipment either, but it works OK and helps me get the alignment very close.

 

imo You're good, nice job.
Put some hours on it to let the bushing break-in/settle.

 

Modern Q/A issues in cartridge manufacturing are well known. Though in $400+ cartridge, I would continue repeating exchange until I get one done right.

You need to be careful about source of your purchase though. There are known on-line sellers, who buy Q/A rejects from brands and sell them as NEW items without telling buyer the whole story.

 

Mine is also bent the same way, but maybe half the amount yours is, so I kept it. Tough decision, its a lot of money, but if it sounds good I guess its fine. You will have to buy a new stylus sooner than you probably think anyway.
I try to stay around 300 hours, certainly not above 500 hours. Nagaokas styli just are not that great, but the carts can sound quite fabulous.

 

Thank you, this one came directly from the Canadian importer from Nagaoka Customer service.