Zu/DL-103 / Turntable Setup 101
While the modern hi-fi press has excavated a complex of convoluted rabbit holes regarding turntable tuning, mounting and enjoying the Zu/Denon DL-103 pickup doesn’t need to be religious or so slipstick silly. One reason for this is the Denon DL-103 features a cutting lathe sized conical stylus, which seats nicely from top to near-bottom and is less sensitive to left/right angular differences—that it’s the right size (not teeny-tiny) it doesn’t skate around in the bottom of the groove high-frequency hunting. This also makes for a far less abusive interface for your wax (vinyl record) compared to a small skinny-ass line contact styli—“deeper into the groove” is non-sense, the information is cut/pressed into the sides of the vinyl record. Mathematically, if we were to get the slipsticks out, there is arguably more information (more area) near the top of the groove.
The basic are: you want your deck to be level so gravity is only messing with your downforce measure—you want your stylus to have about 2.5 grams of downforce. You want the stylus to fit orthogonally in the groove, horizontally, vertically and rotationally. You want to make sure you have your wires connected to the right places.
Before you mount your pickup, level your table. Put a bubble level on the platter and level to the platter.
Now, leaving your stylus guard on so you don’t break the cantilever, connect the wires and mount the pickup. Color and pin convention: RIGHT channel is RED/GREEN, red is high (R+) and green is its mate (R–). LEFT channel is WHITE/BLUE, white is high (L+) and blue is its mate (L–).
Leaving your stylus guard on, set the ballpark downforce. The stylus guard weighs about 1.3 grams, so when you set the downforce with the guard pushed on set the downforce to 3.8 grams—when you remove the guard the downforce will be about 2.5 grams, which is your target.
Again, with the stylus guard installed, set the stylus to sit orthogonal to the groove/stylus point of contact. The turntable manufacture provided a gauge for this, it will get you into the butterzone. Alternately, and since the Zu/DL-103 uses a nice square housing, you can sight the face of the pickup to the spindle center. If you’re careful you can use a pencil with flat spots as a makeshift but effective sighting arm, it works great. You can get a bit geeky here if you want, if you are spinning singles for example you could set your top-down orthogonal contact points for 7 inch disks. No slipstick but yes to the pencil. Same for an EP (10”), or if you’re spinning 12” singles you can tune for cut one and two bias. Once you get in the ballpark with the stylus protector in place, you can remove it and sight directly off the stylus.
Azimuths front and side. Here you might want to use a magnifying glass or get a good photo on your phone and blow it up. With the guard installed, at least until you get things close, set the stylus angle-of-dangle. You want your stylus to fit straight up and down in the groove, both axes. I use the guard installed resting directly on the matte or platter. Get it close this way. Then add a sheet of wax and remove the guard and finish dialing things in. First, your head-on axis, then set your, side-on axis. Side-on is also known as the vertical tracking angle (VTA). With the guard on make the cores adjustments, get yourself in the ballpark, then fine-tune with the guard removed. If you have a headshell you can generally set the head-on angle-of-dangle by simply holding your tonearm at the gimbal pivot and then applying a bit of rotational pressure to the headshell/pickup. Or, and in the case of a single-piece tonearm, you shim one screw or the other with shim washers or folded aluminum foil, leveling that head-on stylus angel. If your tonearm has this adjustment feature build in you likely know about it—the vast majority do not. I generally don’t use shim washers because I really don’t like mounting pickups, bits of aluminum foil folded up to the needed thickness work pretty well and you don’t have to fully remove screws.
For the final side-on angle-of-dangle you really want to use a magnifying glass and sight using the stylus sitting in the groove with the right 2.5 grams of downforce. If you had to add washers or shims of some sort you will need to readjust the downforce. Carefully raise or lower the tonearm deck tube in the table until the stylus sits straight up and down in the groove. I recommend you put the tonearm in the cradle, locked if the feature is there, make the height adjustment to the tonearm, then check. Also, you can use thicker or thinner matts to accomplish this—yes, matts, less or more, thicker and thinner also influence the sound, experimentation is advised, trusting your ears. Yes, gauges and measures really help you get into the butterzone, especially the pencil trick. Still, if you have the time I highly recommend experimentation with the VTA, trusting your ears. What sounds right to you is right (to you).
Yeah, this really would be easier to watch than read. I will try and put a video together. I wish I had those killer video teaching skills like 3blue1brown on You Tube. Check that guys’s channel out, very nice.
