OT: Cartridge Alignment in Radio Days

I was wondering the other day how radio engineers set cartridge alignment back in the day for best playback of 45s...I worked in radio at the tail end of the vinyl era (85-92 or so) in a station that had two Russco tables in the control room and for the life of me I can't recall if the cartridges (which were I think Stanton 500s) were adjustable or if the headshells just dictated alignment. And as I recall, probably 85% of the vinyl played were 45s and I never recall it sounding at all bad.

This is more just idle curiosity so I'm not looking for responses with recommendations for protractors and cartridge suggestions or anything like that...just curious how the stations got the best sound out of 45s in olden days.

Edited by vanmeter

Mark M. can probably chime in on the best cartridges to get. He's the cartridge king. He knows what's best to use, how many grams to weigh the arm down, and just about anything you'd want to know to get the cleanest vinyl transfer without that worn-out sound that's on so many records!

I go back to the turntable era, but only as a p/t
jock, not an engineer so I don't really know what (if
any) cartridge alignment was done. Also, most every
station I worked at from 1974 on played music from
carts (or later on CDs/hard drive).

I do remember the Micro-trak arms. As I recall, they
were the "arm" equivalent of a QRK turntable...rugged
but not very refined. I don't believe there was an
easy way to adjust tracking force, other than weighted
shims.
They seemed to work OK with Stanton 500s, which as I
recall wanted 2.5-3g tracking force. Anything lower
than that and these arms wouldn't track worth beans.

As far as LP vs 45 alignment, couldn't say. None of
the stations I worked for played much in the way of
LPs.

In the early '70s, my university's student-run station had a pair of QRK turntables, fitted with Rek-O-Kut S220 tonearms and Shure M44-7 cartridges. The head shell pretty much enveloped the phono cartridge, so if there was a way to adjust overhang, it wasn't really apparent. The screw knobs on the S220 arms, however, looked like something any jock could easily mess with and convert them to Wreck-A-Cut. However, the setup worked very dependably, even with unsteadily-handed novice deejays.

Cue burn was almost non-existent, even on styrene 45s. A good part of the reason was that Shure Brothers had a program for college radio stations: send them your mangled N44-7 styli and they would send you new ones at no charge. Never knew about that until attending a college radio convention in Chicago, where Shure had a booth.

The first commercial station I worked for (an AM full-service AC) had Gates TTs and Micro-Trak tonearms, outfitted with Stanton 500 carts and conical styli. I seem to recall there was room on the top of the head shells to adjust the overhang. I agree with Hykker: they got the job done, but they weren't very refined, right down to their looks.

When the station and its sister FM built a much larger state-of-the-art facility next door in 1980, the Gates TTs remained behind, replaced by Technics SP-25s and new tonearms. Don't recall what they were, since I left a few months after the move.

Next stop was KOMA in Oklahoma City, where I'd worked for several months (playing all carted music) before wandering behind the control board one day and finding a turntable! It was used to play the Lutheran Hour on Sunday mornings, and I utilized it once to play some of my own 45s on a Christmas songs countdown. It was either a Russco or QRK, with Micro-Trak tonearm, and it felt very weird to hit the start switch on the board, because the TT was completely out of sight. If a record had gotten stuck, it would've taken awhile to get around in back to give the tonearm a nudge!