Digital Stylus Force Gauge: Jennings Mini 300

[jrhymeammo]

So I've decided to treat myself to a digital stylus force gauge, since my dog decided he was going to use my trusty Shure SFG as his new chew toy. But the cheapest unit I could live with was priced at $89 by Steve Blinn. I didn't think it was expensive, but I certainly don't consider it cheap. Also, the Shure unit has upped its price by 50% to some $36.

After a quick research, I've decided to steal the idea from the thread below and save #50.
http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=67124

Unlike DarqueKnight from the Polk site, I ended up paying $34.15 for the Jennings Mini 300 and a 100g calibration weight. I'm not going to post my procedures since DarqueKnight has already done a great job. The only difference is I used a corner of an empty CD case instead of gluing 2 pieces of thin plastic.



BTW, when I had set the VTF with the Shure SFG, I had tried to set between1.75 to 1.8 grams.



Accuracy of the unit: Very Good.
Since I just got back from a business trip in Japan, I have a handful of Japanese coins.
One of the coins, 1 yen(currency), is made to weight exactly 1 gram. So, I've placed one coin at a time, upto 12 coins. Everytime a coin was placed, the unit calculated the overall weight in a proper 1.0 gram increment. This little test was repeated and showed with great accuracy on both Stylus rest (taped red) and the center of the stock tray.

Ok, that sounded a bit confusing so I took some pics of another experiment with US Nickles. If you didn't know, a Nickle weights in at 5.0 grams. If you don't trust me, ask our boys in the RR section.








Have Fun,
JRA