Ortofon 2m red to blue upgrade

Oh, I see. Never encountered such thing myself, so I was doubtful a bit. Patitently waiting for your comment on the Blue sound and of course what might have caused your channel issue.

 

Should be good then.

 

Yes, I will definitely post my thoughts on the differences between the red and the blue. With the red, I was getting sibilance in vocals and hi hats didn't sound right to me. I'm not sure if i was getting much IGD, but I if I was hearing it , it didn't bother me as much as the highs. The highs were almost on the edge of distorted sounding. Maybe it had a bad alignment. This being my fisrt turntable, I've never done an aligment, so we'll see how that goes tonight

Good, I will have a spare stylus then, hopefully and also be able to go back and compare

 

let us know if you notice a difference.

 

Upgraded to the 2M Blue from the supplied Carbon cartridge on a Rega P2 and the difference was night and day, so much more detail and seperation on the Blue, running through a Schitt Mani phono it sounds superb. Next upgrade when the Blue wears out will be the 2M Black.

 

You will want to buy adjustment accessories for that cart though. The base P2 will not fit that cart very well Im sure.

 

Added a 2mm shim

 

That changes the SRA 0.5 degrees, basically nothing. You will likely need more. Then there is also a question of Azimuth and Anti Skate which cant be changed on a P2.

 

Tone arm is parallel and tracks well, you are right that there is no anti skate on the P2 but I have had no problems there.

 

Tonearm being parallel is not as important as the SRA, at least when it comes to the Black. It might work well now with an Elliptical, but thats very different from a Shibata. And Anti Skate is not something that causes noticable problems per say, some use 0 anti skate and say "It dont matter". It does though, and it changes from cart to cart. Azimuth again is something quite important for finer profiles but sadly it wont be changeable on the P2.

 

This might be a help when it comes to VTA:

New Rega 3-Point VTA Adjuster | Michell Engineering

For azimuth- use shims as it's possible to adjust azimuth on the P2 this way. A friend of mine has a 2M Black on his P2 and this combination is really good sounding.

 

Good to know. Thanks for the link.

 

I have both the Blue and the Black. One of these days I put the Blue stylus in the Black cartrigde, because a forum fellow does that and I wanted to try. Sounds really good and on several records this Frankenstein sounds better than the pure Black. I conclude that the Blue nude elliptical stylus is actually very good and in some situations sounds better than the nude shibata. I’m not sure how much does the Black-Bronze cartridge adds in quality comparing to the Blue-Red one, and my Blue cartridge is mounted in my Pro-Ject Debut Carbon so I’m not gonna compare the Blue-Blue with the Black-Blue too soon, but the Black-Blue Frank is really a killer combo.

 

Ok, just finished installing and aligning the new blue cartridge, put on my new Tijuana Panthers "Max Baker" album (the record I started playing and realized the right channel wasnt working) and the sound is excellent. Tight, punchy bass, wow! Definitley has better bass extension and the right channel is working again. The highs are so much better now. They're nice and detailed, crisp and not too bright for my tastes. I do think the alignment was probably off on the red. I'll put the red stylus back on when I get a chance and report my findings, but for now i'm gonna listen to some more records with the blue on there.

 

All right That's actually close to my experience after changing Red for a Blue stylus on a Red cartridge. I really like that "delicate" and detailed playback of the Blue.

 

I still agree with your point above, but I recently got a very good deal (at-cost) on a blue stylus and switched it out on my red cartridge, and I must admit the sound is objectively better. Not staggeringly obvious night-and-day better, but a noticeable improvement. I'm just posting this for the record, since I think other people are in a similar situation trying to obtain a good sounding system on a budget, and these cartridges (red and blue) are likely the most popular in this price bracket. For my money, if you can get a good deal on a blue stylus, it's probably worth the cost strictly in terms of bang for the buck.

 

I've got a question. Aligned a new Ortofon 2M Blue cartridge on my Pro-ject, it follows the arc and everything on my protractor and everything else looks right so I'm sure it's aligned. Will some of the distortion I'm experiencing go away as the cartridge breaks in?

 

I had to lower the tracking force on my blue to eliminate the distortion.

 

Where did you lower the tracking force to?

 

I’m not at home right now but I think it was around 1.5g.

 

It worked! Thank you!

 

just checked the specs online and it says 1.6g - 2.0g. I think I initially set it at 1.75g, and then took it all the way down to the low end at 1.6g.

 

Preferably you should stay within the cart spec range. Try 1.75 and if its still good with no distortion, keep it that way. If its still a little bad go to 1.6 and try again.

 

I have mine set to 1.65. I have a few jazz records that get some nasty distortion on the cymbals when I’m running the Blue at 1.8.

 

Do folks change tracking force on the fly? Record to record?