Needle problem with serato

[Djschiti]

By the way when the platter is turning I do see the needle move up and down slightly.

[xyloft]

weight almost all the way forward.

looks like it should have 3 grams of pressure. Have you balanced the tone arm? i.e. pulled the weight back so that the arm is balancing, setting the black dial to 0, then twisting the weight forward until it's at 3 grams of pressure?

to much and too little pressure can cause needles to jump.

too much can also cause unneeded wear on the vinyl and stylus.

[JesC]

My needles are about 2 years old but barely used and my tone arm is level with the platter weight almost all the way forward and antiskate is balanced right in the middle, my slip mats are regular felt mats with a layer of wax paper between the platter and the slipmat, I'm just beginning to learn scratching.

sounds like they might be out of service...sitting for two years in unknown weather

[Bassline Brine]

I had an issue with this recently when I was trying out my buddy's setup. I took my serato box, vinyl, needles... basically everything I would bring with me if I took it to a "club" as I would think. Setup on his TT's, and yeah.

It was wonky as hell. Even without the needles on the TT's, it was acting crazy.

What it is, is a combination of things.

The first is grounding the turntables properly. It sounds silly, but if your TT's aren't grounded right, that's going to mess with the signal big-time.

The second part is properly calibrating the TT's and Serato. Just making sure it's done correctly. There are a ton of videos on youtube explaining step by step on how to do it.

But once those two issues are resolved, you should be all set.

If it's still happening and you've covered those bases, then you might have a hardware issue.

[Djschiti]

I re-calibrated the tone arm, cleaned the vinyl, cleaned the needles still the same thing, even when i'm trying to set a cue point to make any fine tuned adjustments with the vinyl it just skips around or it won't even move cursor position in serato, and as for the needles being dameged! This has been happening since they were outta the box. And also with my old needles. the only remedy I can think of is to replace needles and vinyl and start over.

[xyloft]

open up serato, and clickon the Setup Button.

when playing you should see two green circles. you should not have fuzz or dots spread all over the place.

I'm going from memory, so i can't remember if you have to click anything after you click on setup in the screenshot below:


are your USB buffer bars full gray (bars above each deck circle)? when you move them do the immediately shoot down to red/black?

[BoomBapDj]

Can you post a video showing your turntalbe, needle and serato calibration? Maybe one of these guys can see something were missing??

[Djschiti]

Thanx everyone for all your help I watched a couple of videos on calibration within serato and it made a world of difference, I tried beat juggling as well as a little scratching and no problems, it wasn't until I really jerked on the vinyl that the needle skipped but that would probably happen on regular vinyl anyway! I'm including a screen shot of my set up window, the right signal is a little wonky and spotty but it might be an issue in the signal chain, still no complaints! way way better! Now I just need to learn all the tricks that make you guys great dj's! lol Cheers!
/Users/alexlackovic/Desktop/Screen Shot 2012-01-04 at 4.25.43 PM.png

[warpnote]

Djschiti,
Do you know how to balance the technics tonearm?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbsCWMh9nwY

For scratching I normally set weight to 2,5 - 3,0.
I use Ortofon Qbert Concordes, and Shure 447 as backup.

Also for scratching you wanna set Anti Skate to ZERO.
To check if anti skate is actually working at zero: set weight to 0.
The arm should now STAY in the same position.
If you can't set up the arm to not drift, you might have to take the deck in for repair.
A good explanation of anti skate here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIBtZR941Yw