Buying an Ortofon 2M Blue for your Rega?

[Fenton Beasley]

...you will not be disappointed. I bought mine yesterday and was very impressed. It's certainly better than the Elys 2 it replaced.

A word of warning though. My player is a Planar 3 and it has no spacers fitted to the tonearm. I have now lost the use of my cue arm because the cartridge is too tall. If I lift the cueing arm the stylus doesn't lift higher than the vinyl surface. This could be resolved by buying a 4mm spacer from Rega but then I'd also have to by a new, smaller counterweight as this would push it up and past the perspex lid. Over the years, the hydraulic damping in the cueing arm has gone so I think it's a fair trade for superior sound.

 

[Frank Harvey]

When the arm is situated on the record, it should be parallel with it, if it isn't, your turntable won't be performing to it's optimum, and you may even be doing damage to your records because of the angle of the stylus on the record.

The Rega arms fit very simply onto the plinth, so if you can get hold of any large washers, you can place these between the arm and plinth to raise it properly. Get in touch with your dealer to see if Rega have anything that can be used.

 

[chebby]

Fenton Beasley:I have now lost the use of my cue arm because the cartridge is too tall. If I lift the cueing arm the stylus doesn't lift higher than the vinyl surface. This could be resolved by buying a 4mm spacer from Rega but then I'd also have to by a new, smaller counterweight as this would push it up and past the perspex lid. Over the years, the hydraulic damping in the cueing arm has gone so I think it's a fair trade for superior sound.

You need a 1.27mm allen key (I found mine on ebay) to adjust the height of the armlift/cueing platform.

When I had the 2M Blue on my P2 the arm remained parallel with no need for spacers. (The arm taper still sloped down from pivot to headshell and the headshell looked parallel when playing.)
Rega do a spacer that will raise by as little as 2mm, which may be enough to keep your counterweight from fouling on the lid.

 

[floyd droid]

chebby:
When I had the 2M Blue on my P2 the arm remained parallel with no need for spacers. (The arm taper still sloped down from pivot to headshell and the headshell looked parallel when playing.)

Thats more like it Chebby

. Its getting the bottom of the cart sitting parallel to the record thats the crux, tis a tad easier to see as tapered arms dont make life easy for newbies.

Or the top of the cart if its a nudie ( Sumiko , lyra etc ).

 

[chebby]

If you are going to get VTA spot on for every record (all cut at varying angles) then a Rega is not the right turntable anyway.

For that you need an arm where VTA can be adjusted 'on the fly'.

That is a whole other ball-game (and price level).

Rega, in their literature, don't attach a lot of importance to minor differences in VTA and provide different 'spacer' solutions to those who do. (Or who use Rega arms on non-Rega decks.)

 

[floyd droid]

Yip. but vta on the fly is for geeks who tweek , im not so sure that they actualy sit back and listen to anything,lol.

 

[fatboyslimfast]

Tis handy on my SL1210 though, when swapping carts as frequently as I do... Still wouldn't do it OTF as I'd be worried about knocking the tonearm whilst it was playing. But the move-a-lever-twist-the-dial-move-the-lever-back is so quick to do it's daft not to re-adjust for different carts.

But on the Rega, as long as the tonearm is parallel to the record surface, that should be good enough.