CurrrBell

Hey guys, I really appreciate all the suggestions. I've been going through boxes of old records from the attic to help test things out and while I haven't been able to completely get rid of all the sibilance, it is now far less prominent than when I made my OP. The problem really seems to be on a case-by-case basis; some records have none to speak of, while some are pretty bad (Sheer Heart Attack still has issues all over it, "Sussudio" is pretty bad, etc.). From what I see in this thread it seems that it's a combination of many things, which makes sense, but I think fixing the alignment of my cartridge has done a lot. It doesn't seem like eradicating the problem will be a quick fix, as I don't have the equipment to get around using the built in preamp, but I'm pretty content where I'm at right now. It'll just be a kind of ongoing process for me I think, which I'm fine with. Anyway, thanks for all the info, I've learned a lot!

I realigned the cartridge using some of the resources you linked, and it hasn't made a noticeable difference in the sibilance. I did some more research on the topic and found that evidently the problem can be caused by numerous other things, including the cartridge just being shitty, but I haven't found much evidence that this cartridge (AT95E) commonly has this sibilance problem. Another person suggested that the problem can be caused by the vinyl itself, though many other people apparently dispute that. That being said, of the two records I have to test with, the sibilance is much more noticeable on the Queen record. Here's the entirety of "Killer Queen": https://soundcloud.com/chris-bell-146/killerqueenfull To my ears, there's little to no improvement.

Am I wrong thinking that "s" sounds are composed of a lot of high-end frequencies? Once again, sorry if I'm being inaccurate, I was just trying to give a description of what's happening. As for my setup, the table has a built-in preamp so I'm sending it straight into a pair of AKG K240s. Here's an example of what I'm talking about: https://soundcloud.com/chris-bell-146/lp120-test I can produce other examples if need be EDIT: Thanks for the suggestion, I actually saw some info about aligning the cartridge before coming here but the place I was reading from made no mention of the problem I'm having. I'll give it a shot and report back.

Hi. First off, I'm a complete noob with respect to vinyl so I apologize if I use terminology incorrectly (I'm doing my best!). I got an AT LP120 for Christmas and after setting it up, I was a little disappointed when I fired it up for the first time. I was getting a lot of splattering in the high end frequencies, particularly with "s" sounds in vocals, stuff like that. I upped the weight on the tone arm to the max specified for the cartridge that came with the turn table after the person who gave it to me suggested that perhaps the needle wasn't fully picking up the grooves, but this hasn't seemed to help. I've tried outputting the sound through speakers and headphones, also to no avail. The records I'm using are also brand new, so they shouldn't be the source of the problem either. I know this table isn't exactly high end, but surely it's supposed to sound better than this, right? I'd appreciate any ideas on how to improve things