Well, your immediate problem is that with that turntable/arm you are going to need at least 2 grams to make it track properly. Whether that will totally eliminate all problems will remain to be seen.

If that is the limit of the adjustment on the arm they probably have a different weight available to give more range. You need to contact the arm seller or the rep for info and describe the problem.

There also is a second possibility; on some arms there are one or two set screws that you can loosen in order to move the entire adjustment assembly forward or back.

A crude but workable solution is to wrap some #22 bare solid copper wire very tightly around the arm near the end to add weight, and then rebalance and set; that is the last resort, of course...lol.

There are various tools that you can buy to do setup on the arm and cartridge which you can get from Music Direct, or the Needle Doctor. For setting the height, however, you can visually get a good idea by looking at the arm from the side to see if the lower surface of the arm is perfectly parallel to the surface of the record. It is pretty obvious if it is not.

The Pro-Ject Align-IT alignment tool is very good but a bit pricy.

jawsthegame wrote:

Hello all,

I just installed an Ortofon 2M Blue and a Pro-Ject Tube Box SE II.  My turntable is a Technics SL-1200MK2.  I am experiencing a lot of hiss and pops with this new cartridge that I did not experience with my old Shure M97XE. I balanced the tone arm and set the dial to zero, ten attempted the set the tracking force to the recommended 1.6-2.0g. Unfortunately I was only able to go up to 1.5 since the counterweight was as far in as it could go at that point.  I'm also never sure what to set the height and anti-skating to. It's seems to be much easier to skip now when walking by the player.

I'm sure that I am doing something glaringly wrong here.  Any thoughts?

 

Thanks,

Tom

I would suggest going to the Vinyl Engine forum.

http://www.vinylengine.com/turntable_forum/index.php

I could cause it if you are too light. The headshell is not the issue, the cartridge is; and your overall weight is too light, not too heavy.

It could also be that the cartridge is outside the weight range that the arm is designed for. I suggest that you call a rep at Music Direct and inquire about the situation. They will have information on the appropriate cartridge weight range for the arm and also whether there is a different weight that can be purchased.

You definitely want to get it to track at least at 1.8 to 2.2g.

Tom, I also have a 2M blue in a pretty basic turntable rig (Thorens 170). I found the marking on the arm for tracking was not what the Sure tracking gage revealed and I have no idea if the anti skating setting had anything to do with reality at all. I strongly suggest you invest in a tracking guage..

http://www.amazon.com/Shure-SFG-2-Stylus-Tracking-Force/dp/B00006I5SD

I also had major problems with the angle the stylus made with the record and had to do a lot of adjusting. All that said, once adjusted right the blue does sound a lot better than the red and is worth the trouble.