Tonearm rewiring

[Red Back]

Looking for someone to do a professional job rewiring a tonearm.

I live in Adelaide but happy to deal with interstate.

Cheers .

[andyr]

22 minutes ago, Red Back said:

Looking for someone to do a professional job rewiring a tonearm.

I live in Adelaide but happy to deal with interstate.

Cheers .

 

I can recommend two people who would do a great job:

1. Mark Doehman (producer of the Helix TT)
2. and Mark from Sonic Arts.

 

[Bisguittin]

Please talk to Adelaide-based @skies2clear.

[SonicArt]

what sort of arm is it?

[PhonoFix]

4 hours ago, Red Back said:

Looking for someone to do a professional job rewiring a tonearm.

I live in Adelaide but happy to deal with interstate.

Cheers .

I’m in Adelaide (NE suburbs) and specialise in odd jobs for turntable repairs. Send me a PM for details. Regards Chris

[ray4410]

sonic art audio (melbourne)

[Red Back]

14 hours ago, SonicArt said:

what sort of arm is it?

Calista from Small Audio Manufacturer. Based in Europe..

[Red Back]

10 hours ago, PhonoFix said:

I’m in Adelaide (NE suburbs) and specialise in odd jobs for turntable repairs. Send me a PM for details. Regards Chris

Thanks .

[Red Back]

4 hours ago, ray4410 said:

sonic art audio (melbourne)

Thanks.

[Rich Conrad]

On 26/12/2024 at 7:17 AM, PhonoFix said:

I’m in Adelaide (NE suburbs) and specialise in odd jobs for turntable repairs. Send me a PM for details. Regards Chris

Hi, you may be the perfect person to answer this question. I have the same tonearm as the OP here. It just arrived earlier this month along with a new TT from S.A.M.

 

As you may be able to see in the attached photo, two of the cartridge leads are missing their insulation.  White and red are fine but the other two are bare wire. They appear to extend this way right into the arm. Upon receipt I mentioned this to Ivan (vendor) and he said this is normal.

 

For the life of me I can't understand how bare wires in contact can possibly be right. Can you (or anyone else here) shed some light on this issue? I would be most grateful.

 

<img src="https://i.ibb.co/D5KQRK2/Dec-29-2024-7-43-42.jpg" alt="Dec-29-2024-7-43-42" border="0">

Edited December 30, 2024 by Rich Conrad
trying to attach image!

[SonicArt]

Most likely laquer coated litz wire or clear insulation you are not noticing.

[Rich Conrad]

1 hour ago, SonicArt said:

Most likely laquer coated litz wire or clear insulation you are not noticing.

No, he admitted that they were bare wires but said it didn't matter.

 

Anyway why would any mfr color-code just two of the four leads? That doesn't make sense.

 

Naturally I figured I could wrap the leads myself but that won't address the portion concealed within the tube.

[SonicArt]

I cannot believe they would be bare metal it wouldn't work, they would simply short out.

Some sharp close up photos of the wire would help. put a multimeter on the clip and then on the wire see if there is continuity.

Edited December 30, 2024 by SonicArt

[mloutfie]

Yes it will work. Not good but it will work. A while back I made diy tonearm. And to safe money during prototype I bought such cable these are cheap tonearm wires....

 

I show the wiring examples to rca. Basically the red and wire became signal and the rest are tied into ground. In reality most single ended phono preamp does this in the preamp side. Also yes if you test continuity it is bare wires

 

 

Edited January 2 by mloutfie

[Rich Conrad]

Yeah, I finally realized that the bare wires were the grounds and this is why it's possible. They join at the grounding point anyway!

 

In my case I took everything apart and reassembled it with a different cart and the vicious humming is gone, only to be replaced with a garden-variety ground loop which I shall now address.

 

Or, perhaps more reasonably, wait until I've moved this extraordinary contraption to its permanent location in another listening room.  Who knows, I might get lucky.

[andyr]

1 hour ago, Rich Conrad said:

Yeah, I finally realized that the bare wires were the grounds and this is why it's possible. They join at the grounding point anyway!

 

What do you mean by "They join at the grounding point anyway"?

 

If by "grounding point" you mean the ground terminal on the back of the phono stage, to which you attach the 5th 'ground wire which is in the wire haness coming from the arm - then, no, cart ground wires do not connect to this; they connect to the ground terminal on each input RCA socket ... which will be isolated from the case.

 

1 hour ago, Rich Conrad said:

In my case I took everything apart and reassembled it with a different cart and the vicious humming is gone, only to be replaced with a garden-variety ground loop which I shall now address.

 

If you have a 5th (arm-grounding) wire in your arm wire harness ... I would suggest you try removing this from the phono stage ground terminal.  As the arm is already grounded by touching the non-insulated cart-ground wires ... it seems to me this arm-ground connection is setting up a loop.

 

[aussievintage]

2 hours ago, Rich Conrad said:

Yeah, I finally realized that the bare wires were the grounds and this is why it's possible. They join at the grounding point anyway!

 

59 minutes ago, andyr said:

What do you mean by "They join at the grounding point anyway"?

 

If by "grounding point" you mean the ground terminal on the back of the phono stage, to which you attach the 5th 'ground wire which is in the wire haness coming from the arm - then, no, cart ground wires do not connect to this; they connect to the ground terminal on each input RCA socket ... which will be isolated from the case.

 

 

I felt I had to point out that it used to be common to run 3 wires for stereo turntables.  Most of the early Garrards were wired this way, and even their proprietary swappable headshells were 3-pin (but changed to 4-pin later).  The situation described here, is the same as a three wiree wire system as it sounds like the bare grounds touch each other en-route to the preamp.    Signal grounds are often common in phono preamps anyway (nothing to do with the 5th ground wire to chassis).  Having four wires in the tonearm allows flexibility, but is NOT necessary for most/many situations.  

Edited January 2 by aussievintage

[andyr]

46 minutes ago, aussievintage said:

I felt I had to point out that it used to be common to run 3 wires for stereo turntables.  Most of the early Garrards were wired this way, and even their proprietary swappable headshells were 3-pin (but changed to 4-pin later).  

 "Early Garrards" - wow, you must be even older than I am, av!  

 

I bought my first TT in 1971 - that had a stereo cart with 4 terminals - and 4 insulated wires on the headshell and inside the arm.

 

[aussievintage]

11 minutes ago, andyr said:

 "Early Garrards" - wow, you must be even older than I am, av!  

 

I bought my first TT in 1971 - that had a stereo cart with 4 terminals - and 4 insulated wires on the headshell and inside the arm.

 

 

f'yeah  

 

Garrard 3 pin headshell with "modern" ortofon cart

 

[Rich Conrad]

Thanks for the observation about the early Garrards. That had occurred to me: there's technically no reason it can't be three wires here.  But I've never actually seen it before. 

 

This TT is odd in more than one way, but it's still really appealing to me. 

 

To Andy's question above, this photo may suffice.  Or amaze, or perplex, whatever.

 

 

You'll notice that the ground wires are twisted together. Among other things..

Edited January 3 by Rich Conrad

[Rich Conrad]

Quote

If you have a 5th (arm-grounding) wire in your arm wire harness ... I would suggest you try removing this from the phono stage ground terminal.  As the arm is already grounded by touching the non-insulated cart-ground wires ... it seems to me this arm-ground connection is setting up a loop.

Forgot to add: no such provision came with the setup so I simply ran such a wire myself.  So far it has made no difference in (what I'm assuming is) the ground loop.

 

For whatever reason, I wish to perfect the cartridge alignment geometry before doing anything else.

[aussievintage]

1 minute ago, Rich Conrad said:

So far it has made no difference in (what I'm assuming is) the ground loop.

 

Most probably a ground loop, yes.   The commonest cause I have experienced, when I find one cartridge hums and another doesn't (or hums much less) is those cartridges that have a little metal tag at the back that grounds one of the tonearm wires to the cartridge case (and from there, the cartridge case grounds to the headshell and tonearm via the mounting screws.  You need to isolate the cartridge body from the headshell in those instances.

[Rich Conrad]

4 minutes ago, aussievintage said:

 

Most probably a ground loop, yes.   The commonest cause I have experienced, when I find one cartridge hums and another doesn't (or hums much less) is those cartridges that have a little metal tag at the back that grounds one of the tonearm wires to the cartridge case (and from there, the cartridge case grounds to the headshell and tonearm via the mounting screws.  You need to isolate the cartridge body from the headshell in those instances.

Thanks for reminding me about this.  I read about it yesterday and sort of forgot already.  I also learned that certain audiophiles prefer the integral (non-detachable) headshells. Not me.  My other TTs (Thorens & Lenco) have the common bayonet mount and I'm sort of spoiled by that.

 

With this Aldebaran, I have to remove the entire tonearm assembly in order to work on any aspect relating to the cart.  I'm already very tired of doing that.  It'll be a long time before I replace this cart.