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Which tonearm lead for Audiomods?

wylton

wylton

Naim and Mana member
I have an Audiomods Classic arm, currently residing on an LP12/Lingo/Kore, in the office system upstairs. When I originally wired the arm, I decided to go for an all in one loom, from the cartridge tags to the RCA plugs at the other end, but I have a grounding issue with it now and must get it up on the jig at some point to look. I’m of a mind to fitting an external tonearm lead, while it's up on the jig, preferably one with a 90 degree plug and I’m looking for some pointers as to which one to buy, bearing in mind that I’m not looking to spend a fortune.
 
You will also be needing a corresponding male terminal plug that fits within the tonearm base.

Cardas supply one that comes with a Delrin sleeve to fit Rega bases, with the assumption being that the grounding scheme is via dedicated wire (likely the case with your Audiomods Classic).

m_din_r_drawing.jpg
 
YNWOAN said:
It’s what I use.
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I note from the site, that the 2549 is not as flexible as most tonearm cables and may be difficult to dress on turntables that have a sensitive suspension, though they do mention that Linn used it for their T-Kable upgrade, so I assume that it's not too stiff for the LP12?
 
Looked over a couple of those Zavfino cables at Mark's last week, they're very well made, first class connectors.
 
I was loaned three of the Zavfino cables at the Cranage Hall show. It’s taken me ages to get round to auditioning them but I have been sufficiently impressed that I’ve written a sort of review/report - will post it soon (as soon as I’ve checked the grammar, spelling etc).
 
wylton said:
I have an Audiomods Classic arm, currently residing on an LP12/Lingo/Kore, in the office system upstairs. When I originally wired the arm, I decided to go for an all in one loom, from the cartridge tags to the RCA plugs at the other end, but I have a grounding issue with it now and must get it up on the jig at some point to look. I’m of a mind to fitting an external tonearm lead, while it's up on the jig, preferably one with a 90 degree plug and I’m looking for some pointers as to which one to buy, bearing in mind that I’m not looking to spend a fortune.
Click to expand...

Well, a few days off, so at last I found the time to look at the LP12/Audiomods, which, as I said had a grounding issue. I got the deck onto the LP12 jig to take a look, no obvious problems and continuity measured fine - hmm! I took the case off the NAC42.5, just to make sure that the ground lead wasn't off - no problem there either!

I decided to take the Linn solid base off and put on the bumpon feet as before, because that's another little job I'd been trying to make time for. When I put the 42.5 back, I also decided to leave out the little Sorbothane feet platform that I had been using. None of this stuff should have anything to do with grounding, but when I fired it up, no hum, no intermittent noises that had previously occurred whenever I touched the arm, and what's more, the sound quality was now much better too!

No idea what's going on there, but I'm pleased and I'll accept the result!
 
YNWOAN said:
Most likely some contact that was intermittent, or poor, is now less so.
Click to expand...

Trouble is though, there isn't a connector as such. The ground wire has a spade connector on it, that bolts directly to the turntable chassis at one end and to the Pre-amp chassis terminal at the other. The loom is an all in one configuration from cartridge terminal to the RCA plugs, with the ground wire connected directly to the arm tube; it's a mystery, but as you say, it must be intermittent somewhere! Somewhere down the line, I'll get around to fitting a new external arm lead.
 
I spoke too soon, loud hum when I touched the cueing lever.

It's looking like it might be my poor wiring scheme. I built the arm several years ago, but it wasn't until I transferred it to the LP12 that these problems emerged. Looking again at the Audiomods manual, I see that the recommended approach for the single run loom is to connect the ground wire to the arm tube, the arm base and the interconnect screen. I've neglected to do that, I was so keen to do it in a single run. The more I think about it, the more I think that a new external arm lead will solve the problem.
 
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I spoke to Jeff Spall @ Audiomods this morning, and he was very helpful, The general consensus is that my grounding scheme for the one-piece loom is poor, but also that one of the cables might be breaking down somewhere. Jeff suggested a rewire using one of the Incognito or Isokinetik kits, rather than wiring in an external cable with the existing arm wiring.

One of the problems that I caused was not using an arm connector at the base of the pillar, because that meant the arm base assembly wasn't grounded. For the moment, I'll just mute between records, until I get around to the rewire!
 
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