Alignment and application

When aligning a cartridge with the overhang adjustment template, it is important to remember to align the needle carrier (and thus the needle) and not the cartridge cabinet. There is no guarantee that the needle carrier is perfectly aligned within the cartridge body, so simply aligning the cartridge body will not necessarily produce the desired result.

An overhang adjustment template is a plastic template on which are printed the zero point(s) and the tangent lines against which the cartridge is to be aligned. The template is placed over the spindle of the rotary table (made possible by a spindle-sized hole drilled in the template) and placed against the platen.

The pickups must be adjusted until the needle carrier is parallel to the parallel lines. And this should be achieved for the two points indicated. If the longitudinal axis of the pickup is parallel to the horizontal lines, the tracking error is minimal.