No expert on Control Vinyl but was a Vinyl Club DJ who worked at a Authorized Lights&Sound Center as a Day Job so I know 1200's inside and out. Tonearm Balancing should be the same no matter the deck.

With the Deck leveled, cartridge kit installed and ignoring the plastic scale disc in front on the rear counter weight, adjust the rear counter weight until your tonearm is perfectly hovering parallel to the ground. then without moving the counterweight you just balanced, adjust the plastic scale disc to where "0" is in the 12-O'Clock position. This is called "Zeroing Out" your tonearm.

Now that your tonearm is balanced, it can be properly adjusted to 1-3grams depending on the quality of the grooves, tracking force needed (Scratching vs.Mixing vs. Listening) and the cartridge kit (elliptical EL vs. aspherical AL)

More tracking force makes for better tracking but wears the vinyl grooves and stylus needle out faster. EL Stylus are more needle shaped and contacts more surface area of the groove yielding more detailed sound and generally requires less tracking force but also wears the grooves out faster because the friction generates more heat on the surface of the vinyl. EL generally can be adjusted .5gr lighter than AL.

When grooves get shallower and "Valley Out" on often played and/or older records, EL Stylus can bottom out causing them to jump grooves and sound to dull-out while wearing out even faster.. This can happen on even new but sparsely grooved records like 2-track 12" EP's where the grooves are wider.

EL Stylus are commonly used as listening Stylus for Full Length Albums with dense grooves, Radio Play, where Detailed sound is an absolute must, or when making the best one-time digital conversion possible from a vinyl original. AL are more common for DJ's that want a long life for their precious rare 12" collection that they will still rely on for the future.

AL are the best all-rounder stylus and tracks better on EPs,, Scratch Vinyl or Valleyed Out grooves. I always preferred AL stylus. The positives outweighed the negatives for me. Depending on the Time-Code Disc used, I'd guess AL is best for that too, but I think Ortofon, Stanton, and Shure have stylus made for Time Code discs nowadays, maybe even Serato endorsed stylus exist . . IDK.

Long winded but my passion for vinyl came through. I'd sometimes buy or hoard 2-4 copies of my favorite 12" releases because I knew they had a limited shelf life . . .which is probably a big reason I amassed and am addictedly anchored to a collection of over 150K records that I never play since I went digital. Even yet, I still buy the releases that I like from labels that still release vinyl. Hard and expensive habit for Old School DJ's to break.

Holy fuck 150k records. How much money is that, what kind of house would you reckon to be able to buy with it

Nah, I didn't buy all of them individually. Bedroom DJ's would drop the hobby, come in the shop and sell their crates, other desparate DJ's or their GF's would come in and sell their some of their collection because they needed cash in a hurry, others would have to (ahem) . . go away for awhile and their supposed friends would empty out their storage units to cover a debt, etc.

But the most seasoned DJ's would likely sell their Mixer/Decks before selling their records . . which is the absolute last resort. Hardware can be easily be replaced, but some records are a crap-shoot to whether you ever see them again . . . let alone in good condition or the release or white-labe you want and at a tolerable price.

I guess that's another reason I always bought multiples of good releases. It gave me a spare copy to trade to someone for something they had that I wanted.

This should help youtu.be

I'm following you very closely with this lib3rty :-)

I cut my teeth on turntables back in the day, so mixing on turntables or setting up tone arms etc isn't so much of the issue for me. Ive always loved the feel of vinyl, so it was always a matter of time before I eventually started to find my way back to it to master it, even if only for personal gain and not performance.

I too have the SZ and later this year will be going down the DVS route via the SZ to get me going. A couple of venues I play at have their own 1210s which has sparked the interest, but I am yet to purchase decks for myself to get practising on (looking at reloops) but I haven't got a clue how to make them all talk either.

Totally supporting you on your journey :-)