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Hi! I have the MoFi UltraDeck with the MasterTracker cartridge. Do I need to use a mat, since it has a Dalrin platter and they say that you don’t need a mat for this turntable? Someone is using the Wooden Bull Leather and Cork mat. I’m not sure if I should use one or not. And if so, what adjustments should I make on the tonearm? Thank you!

1 Hudson rubber 2 achromat 3 technics rubber

I am a big believer in using magic eraser to and then finish off with my 1970's Discwasher stylus brush.

The old 1970's Discwasher beautiful wooden handle with the mirror on the back stylus brushes are the shizaz! I use mine daily. I have checked my stylus under a jewelers loop after using and that old tech brush is still hands down awesome for cleaning stylus's.

It appears you are picking up polymer leftovers from record sleeves which is commonly known as ghosting from polymer record sleeve's leaching into to said records after a many years of storage. Sometimes the leaching can be so bad it ruins the playability of said records permanently. There area lot of folks opening 15 plus year old albums now because of this. It is one thing to have sealed records but if they are getting damaged what is the point. There is a certain window of polymer sleeves that were being used in said era. I do not know this correct timeline off the top of my head right now.

The main way to test cartridges is to keep the cantilever material and stylus diamond profile equal across all designs tested. If you compare a cheaper cartridge with lesser quality cantilever and stylus profile with a more expensive one with with higher quality cantilever and stylus profile then the results will be skewed. Test all cartridges with nude tapered boron cantilevers and micro-linear styluses, then you can determine which design sounds better.

I do what Peter Ledermann tells me (he made my cartridge, after all): lower the tone arm twice on a gob of.. Blu-Tack.

molti dicono che il miglior sistema è quello dell'accessorio technics che da anche l'overhang a 52mm

I do what Peter Ledermann tells me (he made my cartridge, after all): lower the tone arm twice on a gob of Blu-Tack. "It sounds like bacon smells”, Bonnie Raitt describing her vintage 1965 Stratocaster

This test was a bit impossible to tell, I think some people might be imagining some things. The Acrylic to me sounded slightly more open...BUT, unless you are playing the same cut over and over for each mat instead of just going through the music which is changing from one mat to the other, it would be nearly impossible to hear the differences because you have nothing to compare any of the mats with that is consistent. With that being said, I have the stock rubber mat, a cork mat, and a Hudson HiFi Acrylic mat, and at home, I could immediately hear the difference that made the Acrylic mat just stand out from the others by a wide margin. But, in your video presentation that difference that I got at home I can barely tell anything on this video. A lot of that might have to do with I have just regular TH-cam, which is not the best sound format to be trying to critically listen to music, whereas some of you might be listening with TH-cam Music Premium thus can hear more subtleties than I can. But again, I keep going back to not hearing the same cut being played over and over for each mat, and for me that presents a problem.

Man this video is annoying

I was going to buy the 2m Black, but now I’m thinking maybe I should go for the AT33PTG/II😊

The original Technics thin slipmat that came with SL-1200mk7 does a pretty decent job. It's not like cheap sloppy slipmat, it's not particularly bendy and it controls the static pretty well. I mean, it sometimes wants to cling onto record but the record itself remains mostly free of static when lifted unlike Technics 6mm thick rubber mat which caused quite heavy static crackling.

Ben, i don't know why you have been missing in action, but if you can return, that would be great. i hope you are well and just are on a hiatus from this endeavor for constructive reasons. c'mon back.

All sounds the same to me. I think it's placebo effect.

I'm surprised by the performance difference here. Noticeable jumps in resolution.

At33ptg hands down better. More musical, sweet sound, don't know how to describe it...but pleasant to my ears

This is exactly the demo I needed!! To my ears, the differences were extremely subtle... in fact I kept jumping down to read the comments, I'd hear a "cut," guess which material we were on now, scroll up... and I don't think I was right once. 😂 It's reassuring because the test suggests that maybe I can squeeze a tiny bit more coloration of the sound out of my system with a particular material... but no matter what I use, it's not going to "ruin" the sound. I don't need to go donate plasma to get the latest, greatest material for my turntable.

Hi Ben 👋 I know life has a habit of getting in the way sometimes, but I can see I’m not alone in missing your videos. They were truly excellent. Fantastic comparisons that were recorded well enough to actually tell a difference. Hope you’re doing well, Ben. 🔊✌️🎶

Amazing

I don’t hear any differences. I’ve tried numerous mats. I just like them for their aesthetics.

I was swayed to the 2M black when it came to a cartridge for my rebuilt Transcriptor Hydraulic Reference, SME3009s2 combo. There was no way I was fitting anything square on the end of that arm, on that turntable :).

There is less than 1% difference between mats. Lol.

Thanks a lot! We don't want any fat and ugly sound 🙂 I have the SL-1200GR and being a newbie on the compliance thing, I need to check some recent purchases and certainly before the next purchase. I watched the Italian TH-cam dude take a wack at explaining this and had to check out before the end, but with one and a half of these tutorials under my belt, I think I got it.

Don't use only the original Technics plastic gauge but also the Stevenson protractor because the plastic one does well its job only in ideal position/ distance of tonearm from spindle. When you move the height of tonearm base up and down the tonearm moves slightly to right or left from ideal position so paper protractor let you to check and compensate. Then mind attention: all checks and settings must be done with antiskating set to zero to protect the cantilever and stylus. After alignments reset again the antiskating. For best sound set always the antiskating a little lower then tracking force.

...wow.. / onkyo / emotiva / mani.. my rig over YT..!!

The Ortophon distorts the solo vocal and to a lesser extent, the choir. Neither the AT nor the Shure do so.

I also use a paint edger pad with the Vinyl Vac solution, vac off, then 2 distilled water rinses.

I just bought the Ultrasonic one from Amazon 25 beans + tax. I'm using a Shure V15 type 3 with a Jico SAS boron stylus. They ain't cheap, but they "Shure" sound sweet. Pardon my pun. Cheers!

I've been seeing a lot of negative reviews on the Jell type cleaners. They supposedly leave a sticky residue behind, and after time it builds up and is almost impossible to remove. It seems very probable. I bought the Hudson version of the Zero dust. I'm going to check out the Hudson UV/ Ultrasonic one, but I'm staying away from the Jell. (did Amazon have it?). Great video, thanks!!

The microscope is a great help, complimented by the ultrasound cleaner.

It’s interesting that the lossy compression formats are also using the louder, more dynamically compressed masters. Maybe it’s because they figure that people who are OK with the more lossy formats are fine with what is now the “loudness war” trend, and the people who would seek out lossless formats would better appreciate the original dynamics of the recording. I don’t know, just a guess.

Surprisingly Ortofon sounds like trash even compared to M97. I'm shocked.

Amazing video. I can't thank you enough for explaining the detail and working the calculations.

Great video!! I don't like the Ortofon as much as the other two, it sounds a bit cold by comparison and (surprisingly, given the stylus) it sounds as if it does not track as well as the others. Between Shure and AT, I have a slight preference for Shure, it sounds more natural to me. Admittedly, I have been a Shure (V15) listener since childhood and one could say I am used to the sound, but at the same time I have been a classical music concert goer since childhood, and the sound of unamplified voices and instruments is familiar to me. Just my 2 cents.

Is there a hole in the cover to accommodate the cartridge handle, which looks like it’s sticking out?😊

Thanks for the video, One thing you should do when setting up the cart is lock down the platter with tape or some other way.

I have always ignored the problem because of the complexity. Thank you for sharing your views.

It seems some don't understand what a mat is for. Simply speaking it isolates the record from the body of the turntable. Acrylic doesn't carry vibrations well, nor does thick felt, but rubber and cork can give both good and poor results.

Rubber Cork vs Kitchen Cabinet liner the winner

Ben, hope you’ll make more videos. Love your channel!

even on yt you can hear AT better low extension and mids better soundstage

What’s the first track played here with the count downs etc?

Ben, please continue the good work.

doing that to a $1000.00 needle made me cry..I have bronze and blue..Throw away the gel as it puts stuff on the needle..A good clean quality brush is all we need..

Are the tops of the grooves showing a whitish reflection?

Hey, I got one from a different brand (European), but it's exactly the same. I've been using it for about two years now. It's a great little thing. Awesome video

I have the 2m blue and it does the exact same thing. They should use those cartridges to evaluate test pressings.

I have that Ultra sonic stylus cleaner and i can hear at times the difference between dirty and clean. I also sonic clean my vinyls with the Vevor digital sonic cleaner.

Thank you for an amazing video. I am in the process of reviving my dad's old JVC QL-A7, and was looking into what kind of cartridge I could fit. If my Google fu and information gathering is correct then the effective mass of the tone arm is 14g with the stock headshell being 10g. I should be able to fit a Nagaoka MP-110H for a total mass of 19g and with compliance of 19, it should give me a resonance freq. of 8.377Hz. So it seems like a decent fit :) The calculator showed me that it would be better to go with the Nagaoka headshell than the standard headshell (1.5g lighter). Having never done this before, I was wondering if anybody could validate my findings?