It still occasionally stutters on start up. Been meaning to contact pioneer about it but t hasn’t bothered me enough to actually do anything about it. Otherwise I love the table. Dead quiet, easy to set up and use, solid feel to everything. Happy with my purchase
And now for something .... Tonearm friction and bearings Graham Robin tonearm Friction and How to See It (Art Dudley, Stereophile, April 2003) A.Dudley gives a simple example for testing the compliance of a pivoted tonearm bearing. He calls this himself not scientific and I have to agree, but it will provide reproducable results and allows a qualitative comparison. The friction in tonearm bearings, here, in the Pioneer PLX 1000, a cardanic bearing is the type of dry friction due to asperities. Comparable to the friction between the surfaces of a tire and the road surface. The differences in the form of the surface, the type of motion against each other and the size of the contact area are obvious, but wear, destruction and loosening over time are inevitable. Cardanic tonearm bearings are essentially complex bearings comprised of two (preloaded) pairs of axial needle bearings (thrust bearing) or ball bearings. By definition the name of the bearing is destined by the plane of the movement, the bearing supports. The horizontal bearing (not unsimilar to the platter bearing)supports the horizontal movement, across the record ( in/out). It is fixed by one verical accessible screw. The vertical bearing supports the vertical movement of the tonearm (up/down). It has two horizontal orientated screws. Both pairs of bearings are exposed to completely different types of motion and load. The vertical bearing has to support the vertical movement of the whole arm and cartridge. The main work is done when the arm is positioned over the outer groove and repositioned to the armrest. I estimate an angle of 10 to 15 degrees. Only a small percentage of the contact area is used for friction. In a ideal world the vertical bearing wouldn't be necessary during replay, because the record is perfectly flat and the compliance of the cantilever would secure that every change of the groove is totally and only transduced in a voltage and not into the lifting of the cartridge or the arm. As the groove is declining, the weight of the arm/cartridge combo helps to return. The task of the horizontal bearing is different. The lower race is carrying the complete weight of the arm, the upper race only needs to hold the inner portion of the construction perpendicular to the platter, allowing the vertical bearing to be unloaded. During replay the tonearm has to pass an angle of approximately 35 degrees with very low speed traversing the record. Not so much movement (=work, energy dissipation, heat) as in the vertical direction. It's reasonable to assume that harder materials will withstand longer against any degradation. Do I have any clue which material delivers which friction numbers? The main factor of friction is force along and perpendicular to the plane of friction. Simply: no mass, no friction. No unevenness, no friction. Does anybody know which amount of friction to apply given a specific tonearm length, weight and cartridge compliance? A little bit simplifying, friction is proportional to the relation of applied force and movement in the direction of the force. The more force you need, the more friction you have to face. Friction isn't evil. Without we couldn't move. With friction of zero we weren't able to push our feet from the ground to move forward. We could only move upwards. With infinite friction we couldn't overcome it and had to stay at the same place forever. So there must me an optimum of friction also for platter and tonearm bearings. A technical aim to strive for. Therefore characteristic lines exists, as a result of experiments. Has anyone ever heard or read of specific tribologic experiments, assumptions, hypotheses concerning TT bearings, the material, the friction coefficient or others technical specifications concerning the technical problems a bearing has to solve? Does any manufacturer of bearings really knows what he should do? Any known science or protoscience. Or only listening tests and adoration of St. Brand of the holy price tag. Back home: outside of our house the transit authority is ripping off the pavement with large machines. I' m sitting here, third floor, listening to Cowboy Junkies's Trinity Sessions and before to the Ry Cooder Soundtrack of the Wim Wenders film Paris Texas. 60 db(a). The tulips in the vase are shaking when the digger hits the ground. The PLX draws his circles, totally unimpressed, sitting on board that couldn't be farther from a hifi rack. Try the following ( inspired by Art Dudley): lift platter and mat. Set tracking force and antiskating to zero. Let the arm flow and play with antiskating, the arm will wobble from the inside to the outside. Mine has no sticking points. It's continuously moving. Turn the volume to max. When you gently rub the arm, you'll hear it. Not the floating of the arm. Tip it gently from the upside or downside. No acoustics from the bearing through the speakers. Four to six moves and it stands still again. Result of friction and gravity in the vertical plane. Is this good or bad? Were ten moves better? Why? Why not? My bearings are a bit loose. I will not touch them.
In short, folks make much too big a fuss over slightly loose tonearm bearings. I agree. Ironically, the couple of SL1200s I have experience with had notable play in their bearings. These tables had some mileage on them but didn't look worse for wear. Loose bearings can be found in any gimbal-type arm. In theory, if the bearings have zero play, then one can argue that they have too much friction. Typical temperature variations found in a home in the northern hemisphere are enough to throw these bearings off the theoretically ideal setting - that applies to a $20K SAT arm as well as it does for a $60 Crosley. Shoot, SAT even supplies their customers with a special wrench for bearing adjustment. What many analog enthusiasts don't understand is that gimbal-bearing arms are assembled by hand. They don't use any fancy calibration devices. The friction/play of the bearings is largely dependent on the installer's experience level, finesse, and feel for what seems correct.
When I got my new PLX a year or 3 ago I was a bit disappointed but not surprised that the bearings were loose. Having read enough beforehand I was happy to try to adjust them & tbh it was pretty straightforward. Just make sure you have the right tools and time to do the work. If you get frustrated - walk away and come back fresh. The way that I judged whether I'd made the bearings too tight was similar to the above article in that it used paper. I thought I'd bookmarked it but the laptops been upgraded since, so... Anyway broadly the method was to cut a small piece of paper, fold it a few times and first check you had the right weight with your tracking weight scales. Take the piece of paper and drop it on the Headshell of your balanced & level arm - if it deflects down under the weight, recovered and iirc oscillated a bit before returning to level, then it was good to go. Take the same piece of paper, attach it to a length of thread, and letting the paper hang as a weight on the thread, bring it to the side of the Headshell. If the Headshell moves with the contact of the thread then again it was good to go. If I can find the specifics I'll update the post later.
I am a happy owner of a new PLX-1000 turntable which I got yesterday. Luckily, the bearings are nice and smooth, the anti-skate works better than expected (my cartridge weight is 1.5 grams and the AS has to be set at 2 grams to balance it out) and there is no motor noise). My one issue is that when I start/stop the platter using the switch there is an audible hum when pressing the switch. I do not notice any hum from the speakers unless I play the music really loud, like 10dB above my listening level. I checked the ground wire and it is connected to the turntable securely and the amplifier end as well. I also checked the cartridge connections and it is tight. The turntable and amplifier are connected to the same electrical power surge unit. Any ideas? On a side note, the Pioneer sounds great. I used an old Sony PS-X7 DD turntable (circa 1979) which has been a workhorse but getting along in the years. The automatic feature no longer worked due to a broken cam. The sound from the Pioneer is notably different from the Sony using the same cartridge (a Shure V-15 Type IV with a new JICO stylus). The Pioneer has better bass with a tight and solid image with better depth. The Sony however offers silkier highs, cymbals are smoother (the Pioneer sounds like tsshhh... the Sony sounds like tsssss....), brass on the Sony also sound a tad smoother. It is as if the Sony has better harmonics over the Pioneer. But the Sony sounds muddier in the bass and less so in the mid-range. Thanks in advance..
I think by "cartidge weight" he meant VTF. Hard to imagine he's really referring to a 1.5g cartridge. By the PLX-1000 manual, the AS must be set according to VTF. He is perhaps saying he needed to set AS to 2 to "balance" the arm for a 1.5g VTF cartridge.
Try a shorter ground (bonding) cable than the one supplied with the PLX. It's not uncommon for these thin bonding cables to develop opens. Your headshell leads are tight but double check that they are connected to the correct color of terminal on each end. Check for secure attachment of the phono cables. You can also try bonding the ground (exterior) portions of the Left and Right cables ends - just wrap and twist a piece of bare speaker wire around them.
I suppose he meant by balance the situation in which the arm is not being pushed too much to the center or to the edge of the record. Does that make any sense?
I use a 12" laserdisc and set the stylus down on it. When I set the cartridge tracking force and the AS to 1.5 grams, the arm still swings slowly to the spindle. Ideally, the arm should stay stationary, which means that there is no pull to any side which can force the stylus to track higher on that side as well as having less force on the opposite side which increases distortion on that channel. To have the stylus sit stationary on the laserdisc, I had to increase the tracking force to 2 grams. Now no matter where I put the stylus, the stylus remains stationary. On my old Sony PS-X7, the AS was accurate. When both tracking force and AS was set to the same number, the stylus would remain stationary on the laserdisc. AS on turntables can be very tricky. If the wrong spring is used, the arm could be stationary on the inside of the disc, but pulls to a different direction on a different section of the disc. I had a Technics SL1210 MK 5 that I was considering buying but the AS was wonkers. It worked fine on the inner two-three inches but the arm would swing to the outer edge if it was on the outer couple of inches. That's why I use a laserdisc. It is 12" like a LP. Some testers use a CD, but it only checks the tracking on the inner part of a disc since the CD is only 5 inches. That turntable would have passed the CD test but it flunked the whole disc test. Another turntable I was considering had another issue. No matter what the setting, the arm would swing out to the armrest very violently.
We debate anti-skating test methods around here fairly often. It's pretty well a consensus that making the stylus stand still on a smooth disc is too much anti-skating. That's why on your turntable you have to apply more than the manufacturer's recommendation. My tonearm won't even apply that much anti-skating force if I wanted to.
I have isolated the hum... It was caused by a bad headshell... Go figure... I put my catridge on another headshell
There was a video posted here recently saying for optimal anti-skate your tone arm shouldn’t stay stationary but rather should move slowly towards the spindle, with a good-enough-for-me scientific explanation. How Do I Adjust Anti-skating On My Cartridge? | Soundsmith
Soundsmith advises using a blank area on a vinyl record, while the poster above is using a polycarbonate laserdisc which will have different friction and hence different skating force, maybe stationary is what you want with a polycarbonate disc, who knows, it's really just a test method to make sure it's working, not really of that much use to find the best setting... Anti-Skating (out of spec?)
When I set the anti-skating on my PLX-1000 with an Ortofon 2M Blue, using a blank record, then tested with the HiFi test record, the results were very good. However the same technique to setup an Ortofon 2M Bronze did not work well at all. When setup properly (on my turntable), the bronze runs to the center smoothly, but very quickly. YMMV.
Has anyone replaced the internal wiring in the tonearm with Cardas wires? Just wondering if it is a worthwhile investment...
This sounds like one of the least worthwhile mods to the Pioneer, at least for the amount of money. Probably the most effective for taming resonances, vibration suppression, etc., would be packing Plasticlay 1/2” deep throughout the bottom panel of the turntable and packing somewhat more of it in the corners.
I just got the Reloop dust cover which looks like a Technics cover with the bubble over the tonearm... It was easy to install once you drill some pilot holes in the bottom plinth (I tried using high bond double sided tape, that failed spectacularly, when you open the cover the hinges came right off the tape, so much for that idea)... Couple of issues though. First, if you put a spare cartridge in the back of the Pioneer in the cartridge holder, the cover will not fully close, it hits the standing cartridge. Remember, the Pioneer arm is 2mm shorter than other turntables, which means the cartridge has to sit 2mm more forward to get it aligned. That 2mm difference makes the cartridge sit higher and hits the dust cover. Secondly, if you need to raise the arm assembly for adjusting the VTF, the arm gimbals will hit the underneath of the dust cover bubble. The Pioneer has the platter sitting higher than other turntables which causes this issue. Thirdly, the cueing lever has to be in the lowered position otherwise it hits the underneath of the dustcover as well. Oddly, I installed the dust cover a tad misaligned on the back. On one side, you can feel a slight edge where the cover sits outside the plinth. The other side has the cover sitting slightly inside of the plinth, i.e. the cover is a bit off to the left. Not much, I'd say about 1/16-1/32" inch. But on the front sides, the cover is sitting perfectly centered laterally on the plinth, which means the cover must be slightly skewed laterally. I am planning to cover the Reloop logo on the dust cover. I am going to print the Pioneer logo on piece of photo paper that is the same size as the logo on the cover. I will cover it with either clear gloss paint or clear tape. When I cut it down to size to fit, I will attach it with double-sided Scotch tape.
