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New count weight weight problems

I have a JMW 10 3D tonearm that has a 180g counter weight. I'm trying to replace it will a 120g counterweight because my cart is too light (7 grams). I can get the 180g off no problem but I can't get the 120g on. Do you have any suggestions to get it on? I don't want ti break the tonearm. Lubrication, gently sanding hole with fine grit sand paper , gently heating the weight up? I bought the counterweight at music direct. It's an official vpi product.

Thanks.

6 comments

Comments (6)

robertmemerson

Sep 26

I sent you an email.

robertmemerson

Sep 26

Mat, Thanks for the offer for the trade in. Lets talk about it off line. I don't see an email address for VPI. Also I'm a member of "I love my VPI Turntable" on facebook. I think you can contact me there on messinger. I prefer to commicate by email at this time.

Rob Emerson

Mat Weisfeld

Sep 26

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Replying to

Sounds good! Fire me over and email at info@vpiindustries.com but I'll also keep an eye out for you on the Facebook Group! 😊

robertmemerson

Sep 25

Hi Mat, Thanks for the reply. I already sanded the plastic insert on the new 120 gram weight. I was successful but it took a lot of time. I didn't want to sand the arm for cosmetic reasons. For those that had similar problems, I used 60 grit sandpaper with a dowel.

I noticed the comments on the music-direct web site, after I ordered the part. It seems I'm not the only one that had problems. One of the comments, "not a VPI part," caught my eye. My counterweight is not stamped with the weight and doesn't have the VPI logo. Something is going on here.

I bought my VPI Aries 3D back in 2016 or so. It came with 180 g weight. I made it work with my cartridge, but I couldn’t get the VTF down below ~1.90 grams. The weight was as close to the bearing housing as possible. The spec VTF of my cartridge, a vintage Grace F-9, is 0.5 to 2 grams with the nominal being 1.2 grams. The cartridge weight is 6 grams. It would be helpful to publish a range of cartridge weights, and the recommended counterweight. The combination of my cartridge, 6 grams, and a 180 gram counterweight doesn’t work well for the JMW 3D. I hope this helps.

Mat Weisfeld

Sep 25

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Replying to

The bigger issue, I think, was the combination of different vendors/partners, the hand-sanded element of the 3D arm, and our attempts to make that counterweight a bit easier to work with. As the owner of VPI, I’m always transparent about how much I hate that counterweight!

Today, I did two cartridge setups, both with Shyla cartridges. The first was on a VPI Dragon with a Gimbal arm—it took about 2 minutes to dial in while I was on the phone with another customer. The second was a Shyla on a Classic Turntable with a JMW-10 Uni. Even though I’ve gotten pretty quick with setups at this point, it still took me about 15 minutes to dial in, and it required much more attention.

I’m sharing this as a bit of "for your information" but also to validate the frustration you’ve experienced with that counterweight—believe me, I share it!

That said, I’m glad you were able to make it work in the end, and if you ever want to trade in your tonearm, I’d be happy to work with you on that. Talk soon!

Mat Weisfeld

Sep 24

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Hey Robert, thanks for posting about this and being part of the VPI Family! Have you tried emailing us at info@vpiindustries.com? We have been a bit backed up but trying to get caught up and everyone sorted out. If it is an older JMW 3D we had some variations on the +/- of the back stub since they were all sanded after printing by hand. You can try to continue the hand sanding/heating or we can get you swapped out on the weight. Talk soon and we will get you resolved!