Rather than focus on recordings this month, I am taking a dive into some inexpensive gadgets to help fellow turntable owners. With the prices of many records reaching the stratosphere, and overall inflation and tariffs, vinyl collecting, maintaining a collection, and setting up a turntable can get too expensive. Indeed, I have all but stopped buying most “audiophile” releases and new vinyl in general – these high prices ruin the experience for many of us who just want to listen to good-sounding music.
For accessories, I don’t believe in buying the absolute cheapest gadgets out there, as you get what you pay for. But by making the most of the money I spend, I can get satisfying results while not breaking the bank. Here are some accessories I’ve come across over the past several years that can help you set up a turntable or maintain your collection, without costing any of us a month’s worth of groceries.
Stylus Force Gauge
Roll the clock back to my teenage years, when all I had for setting tracking force was the dial on my turntables’ counterweights – you’d float the tonearm just off the record surface, move the dial’s scale to zero, then turn the counterweight to the tracking force (in grams) indicated on the dial.
With the older cartridges I owned back then, and the equipment I played my records through, it wasn’t so critical. I eventually bought a plastic balance-style gauge with a sliding weight on it, and it worked well enough for the time. It’s been so long since I’ve seen it that I can’t remember who made it. I may have had another one but again, memory escapes me.
For the past decade, I’ve been using an inexpensive digital gauge that I bought online. The same model I bought is still available for under $12, and is plenty accurate enough. It comes with a 5-gram calibration weight.
Interestingly, a well-known turntable manufacturer was selling this exact same gauge, with their logo on it, for $79.95. Don’t be fooled – these are commodity items, and logo customization is cheap. In fact, this particular model is available in large quantities on Alibaba starting just over $4, with another dollar or so to add a custom screen-printed logo.
At any rate, it’s part of my turntable setup toolkit and has performed without issue for years. I think I replaced the button cell battery once. I usually remove the battery when I’m done using the gauge and store it in the provided case.
Alignment Jig, 3D-Printed
I saw this very interesting concept while searching for cartridges on eBay a while ago. But a back story first.
When I bought my Shure V15 Type V in the early 1980s, it came with its own alignment kit. You’d remove the stylus assembly, then clip the cartridge body into the alignment sled. First you would place the sled’s center collar over the spindle to set the correct angle, then move the sled and cartridge by placing the numbered side slot over the spindle, pivoting along the center collar to set the front-to-back placement on the headshell. Finally, you would insert a plastic gauge into the stylus mount to make certain the cartridge was perfectly level to the playing surface (the azimuth alignment). The manufacturing tolerances for the stylus assembly were such that the cartridge was in essentially perfect alignment. The fact that it tracked everything I ever threw at it (which every single cartridge I’ve owned since then has failed at!) is testament to how well it worked…for decades.
Here's a link to a Shure alignment kit that sold on Sky-Fi Audio.
I have long thought that a similar alignment jig for other cartridges would be handy. Turns out someone is 3D -printing a similar device and selling it on eBay (user ID aceofharps). While the selection of cartridge compatibility is limited, it does cover many popular manufacturers and models, so these are a great help to a lot of turntable owners.
This type of alignment jig might not be 100% accurate as it’s aligning the cartridge body and not the cantilever, but show me anything else that will get us within the ballpark so easily. For many owners who don’t want to fuss with tweaking cartridges for hours on end (as many do), this beats slapping a cartridge onto a headshell without any way of knowing if it is aligned properly.
At this stage in life I don’t have the patience, the eyesight, or the manual dexterity I had 30 years ago to fuss with mounting cartridges. (As it is, it takes me a couple of weeks of fussing since I also get frustrated easily these days.) I don’t have the deep pockets to pay someone to do it either. Any tool like this that can help me get a cartridge aligned would be greatly appreciated.
With this tool, I could mount the cartridge and be assured it’s fairly close, and that would save a lot of guesswork as I apply the final tweaks with my mirrored protractor. Unfortunately there is no jig for any of my cartridges, although the Nagaoka jig might work with my MP-500. But for other brands and models, this is a handy accessory to get alignment reasonably very close to where it should be, and is more accurate in some cases than eyeballing a non-mirrored protractor.
Free Paper Alignment Protractor
If you are really on a budget, you can download a printable arc protractor from a site like AlignmentProtractor.com. It does require knowing the pivot-to-spindle distance of the mounted tonearm but otherwise, it provides for a two-point alignment along an arc. One drawback is that the lack of a mirrored surface can lead to misalignment. (A mirrored surface allows for parallax correction as you look at the lines in the grid.) My two recommendations are to print it on suitable card stock (so the stylus hole won’t enlarge – it might help to also use packing tape to reinforce the hole), and to make certain you are printing it at 100 percent scale.
If you want to get really fancy and high tech, print this on clear self-adhesive plastic, apply it to a mirror, and use a drill bit for drilling glass to drill the spindle hole.
This is what my current protractor uses, in fact. It is a similar arc protractor, and the mirrored surface lets you see the reflection of the two lines on either side of the cantilever. If the reflection perfectly lines up to the printed surface, and the cantilever is parallel to those lines, you are looking at the protractor dead-on straight and can get the cantilever where you need it. (Unfortunately, the manufacturer seems to be out of business, or I would have recommended ordering one.) I’ve cross-checked it with my circa-1982 Dennesen Soundtractor and it matches up exactly.
You can download a printable protractor from AlignmentProtractor.com. They have a couple of dozen preset turntable models to choose from, if you don’t know your pivot-to-spindle distance. Other free download sites are online as well.
Example of a cartridge alignment protractor, not to scale (do not print this out for use). From the Enjoy the Music.com website.
Headshell and Cartridge Holder
Somehow (heh!) I’ve ended up having a few cartridges and headshells, as many of us tend to do. To manage the assortment less haphazardly, I bought an Audio-Technica headshell storage case. I can rotate through four headshells – one on the turntable, three in storage. Each headshell has its own capsule-shaped cover, which has a slot for the finger lift to extend out the side. This is perfect for my needs. However, one has to take care to either use the stylus guard for the cartridge, or make certain you do not catch your stylus on the edge of the capsule cover as you place it over the headshell. It could be an expensive replacement. There are other holders out there as well, but this one was fairly priced and readily available.
Audio-Technica AT6003R headshell and cartridge holder.
Static Removal
Who remembers the Discwasher Zerostat? It was an anti-static gun, which was pointed towards a record or inner sleeve to remove static. I got mine as a gift, as part of a kit that also contained a Discwasher D4 brush and fluid, a stylus brush and fluid, and a couple extra pieces, all mounted on a wooden base with a plastic dustcover. Back then, the kit retailed for $24. Today, a Zerostat (made by another company) sells for $70. I have no idea why, as the Zerostat is nothing more than a metal lever stressing a piezoelectric crystal inside of a plastic shell.
An example of a plasma lighter.
A member of the Vinyl Engine forum discovered that the inexpensive rechargeable plasma lighters from Amazon and elsewhere also provide an anti-static function. No, you don’t hold the sizzling beam of electrons close enough to melt your records or light your whiskers on fire, but you can hold it a few inches away and wave it over the vinyl surface to remove static just as effectively, if not better than, a Zerostat, for less than $10.
Headshells
I haven’t yet taken a deep dive into headshells just yet, but there are so many varieties out there that I’m stuck in an analysis paralysis situation trying to decide what to try next. I will not spend outrageous money on a headshell, although I’d consider paying more for one that offered different alignment adjustments. That said, there are some wooden headshells I’ve been eyeballing for a while. Mine are certainly not Amazon-grade no-name-brand cheap, but are better than what came with the turntable when I bought it a few years ago.
Yamamoto Sound Craft HS-7 headshell.
Yamamoto Sound Craft in Japan makes a selection of beautifully-crafted headshells made from different woods, such as African ebony (HS-1A, the same material used in oboes and clarinets), asada (cherry, as the HS-2), tsuge (Japanese boxwood, as the HS-3), and Japanese camellia (HS-7). Prices appear to range between $75 and $150 depending on the source and the model. Each wood has different strength, mass, and resonance characteristics. They also offer titanium and carbon fiber headshell models. A number of eBay sellers offer Yamamoto headshells.
LP Gear is another source for headshells to fit your budget, and their house-brand Zupreme headshell is under $100 and crafted by the stylus manufacturer Jelco in Japan. Keep in mind that some cartridge manufacturers like Audio-Technica, Nagaoka, and Ortofon sell headshells as well, with some of them available in tandem with a pre-mounted cartridge.
Record Stand
Have you ever wanted to prop up a record to let it dry after running it through the ultrasonic bath? Or, support one to photograph it, or to set it aside as you swap sleeves? Nagaoka makes the SLT01 stand with adjustable arms that can support records from 7-inch to 12-inch. I don’t use mine often, but it’s very handy when I need something like this. These are not easy to find unless you scour eBay, but they are worth seeking out.
Record and Jacket Protection
I have a ritual when adding used records to my collection, or rediscovering and cleaning up something I already own. After I have determined whether or not the record is a keeper, I run it through my Degritter record cleaning machine after giving it a manual cleaning with cotton pads and my own cleaning solution (as the Degritter doesn’t remove grime or greasy fingerprints). From there, I like to place the cleaned records into “rice paper” sleeves, and the jackets get similarly wiped down with a microfiber cloth and placed into a plastic sleeve. If I have multiple copies of a record, this sometimes helps me identify which one is either my keeper, or the preferred copy I’ll listen to. In addition, any new record sold with a paper sleeve is stored in a new inner sleeve.
My biggest reservation for a while was sourcing the sleeves. I’ve seen some that are audiophile-branded and too expensive but if you think about it, these sleeves are commodity items, likely manufactured by the millions by just a few different manufacturers, many with custom branding. Regardless of manufacturer, most if not all “rice paper” sleeves are made from HDPE, the same plastic used for grocery store bags and milk jugs. (They use a thin sheet of paper between the layers of plastic to provide stability.) Certainly no “secret sauce” here!
I’ve also had varying luck buying sleeves over the years – some were slightly too large and crumpled inside an LP jacket, where others had a bad seam on one side. Others just felt flimsy.
From the Hudson HiFi website.
I found a brand called Hudson HiFi and the prices for buying in bulk were so good that I ended up buying 500 of both the outer sleeves and the rice paper innersleeves. I still need a good outer sleeve for a few of my larger gatefold sets but otherwise, I’m well into using these and have yet to find a defective one. As of this writing, the outer sleeves are selling for $78.50 for a 500 pack, and the inner sleeves for $82.95 for a 500 pack. (They are shipped as five 100 packs.) That’s about 32 cents per album to upgrade its protection. A bargain in my book! You can order these directly from their site, or via Amazon or eBay.
Record Stabilizer Weight
Some of us make use of a stabilizer weight over the spindle of the turntable. While these do not completely cure warped records, they do help with “dished” records, and can also help prevent the records from slipping on a slippery mat.
There are two types of stabilizers. The weight-based stabilizers are basically metal “pucks” that you place over your spindle. The other type is clamp-based and will grip the spindle while providing downward force. The latter are best for belt-drive and suspended turntables (think Linn LP12), although they will work on all turntables.
I found that Hudson HiFi offers weights starting at $20, but be aware that they are made of steel. (Based on my past experience, I would suggest you use a weight made of non-magnetic metal, as moving coil cartridges often have powerful enough magnets that, at the end of a record side, a steel weight will attract them.) There are numerous others on Amazon made of aluminum which also start around $20. For a few dollars more, you can find an aluminum stabilizer with a built-in bubble level, like this one.
I found a clamp-style stabilizer for $25 (plus shipping) from Turntable Lab. You place it on top of the record label, then tighten the knurled knob to lock it to the spindle.
From the Turntable Lab.com website.
One final note I can make is that there are more expensive accessories available that could work better, but this is more of an entry-level view of accessories, where someone can get their foot in the door and decide if they want to move up to better, more expensive products in the future as their budget allows. One need not sell a kidney to get started in playing and collecting vinyl, in other words.
Anyhow, that’s all I have in the gadget box for now! Hopefully those of us who are into vinyl and on a budget can find some value in these relatively inexpensive accessories. They are out there if you know where to find them. Using common sense and buying sensibly-priced accessories will give you the most bang for your buck, and I hope to have given you tips on a handful that will help you along the way.
Header image courtsy of Brett Sayles/Pexels.com.
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