"Highly Recommended" -John
When you see John or Russ setting up a turntable at Pearl Audio, this is the scale we like to use. If you're standing at our counter, you can see our back bench with all our regular-use tools, and there it is. The only cartridge scale around, stored over the Wiha clipper-gripper, next to the Kinky. We use it to set up $25,000 Linn Klimax tables, $14,000 Graham tonearms, TechDAS's and $399 Pro-jects.
Why? We'll because it's the most thoroughly engineered scale I've ever used and I just the physical handling of it. I've owned a good 1/2 dozen scales and this is the king.
The Atlas is rugged, it quickly and easily fits to the OUTER edge of the record each time for 100% consistent measurements (because your using the same location each time), it's big so it settles evenly over different height platter surfaces, it's tall so that swinging cartridge body hits it instead of the stylus, it reads fast which is quite important given that I'll often do 10+ weight measurements in final adjustment of a big cartridge, and its lever and front edge are nicely recessed so there is much less chance of catching a gazillion dollar stylus on it. It's remarkably consistent as proven by my reference weight never changing measurement. Lastly, the crisp bright red Star Trek LED digital readout is faster and easier to read than a greyscale lcd - important when you've been working on a table for a few hours with high intensity lighting for cartridge adjustment, or when doing the final setup in our somewhat dark ( we hear better in the dark ) reference room. Love this scale!
The Rega Atlas tracking force gauge is designed to provide reliable and accurate measurement of tracking force for the lifetime of your turntable. Inside the durable aluminum casework is a highly stable loadcell and precision amplification circuitry.There is also a custom designed front guard to protect the measuring element and provide easy alignment. This allows the Atlas to achieve accurate and reliable performance with minimal input from the user.
The loadcell is a premium full bridge, shear beam construction. The cell is temperature compensated for a wide range of operating temperatures and is extremely resilient to shocks and deterioration over time.
The intelligent design of the Atlas ensures the the tracking force is measured in the same place every time allowing for very fine adjustment to two decimal places.
Rega Atlas Stylus Scale Technical Specifications
Specifications
Accuracy: +/-0.01 grams
Range: 0.5 - 10 grams
Safe Overload: 10 grams
Supply: 9V PP3 cell
$276