proper adjustment of tonearm for project rpm 1.3

[cordluxxe]

My project rpm 1.3 came with a white plastic tool to adjust the downward force.
The instructions for adjusting the downward force say to " place the stylus pressure gauge onto the platter with metal tip facing but not over the spindle and carefully place the tip of the stylus on the the point marked 18, representing 1.8 grams pressure". It looks like a little teeter totter and the idea is that the stylus gauge will level out at the correct pressure.To adjust the pressure you slide the counterweight toward or away along the tonearm.
Well there is no 18 mark. There is 10 15 or 20. I can guess approximately where the 18 mark would be, but no matter how hard I try, i cannot get it to perfectly level out. And the adjustments that are being made to the position of the counterweight are frustratingly tiny. Is there another way to do this?
Also im not sure how close the bottom of the cartridge is supposed to be from the record. The genie came with the ortofon 2m red and i have since upgraded the stylus to the 2m blue. It seems to me that the 2m blue is sitting a little closer to the record than the red, which seems weird to me.
Also the instructions say that the tonearm should be parallel to the record. With the felt mat that was supplied and a record on the platter, the tone arm is definitely not parallel. As i did not feel comfortable adjusting the vta, I added a second thicker mat to to make the arm perfectly parallel. But in doing this, did I alter the correct downward pressure?
Most records sound great, in fact really great, but there are certain passages in some of Dave Brubecks piano that sound slightly distorted. The rest of the band sound great. Clean tight bass, crisp drums, beautiful reeds, but his piano sounds a bit rough. I can't tell if its the recording or if that particular frequency is being distorted because of improper setup.

[sreten]

Hi,

For that sort of gauge you slide it back and forth and where it
changes balance it tells you what the tracking force currently is.

Getting it into exact balance is not necessary.

Arm height is easily adjustable on that deck, see the manual.

Go to vinylengine and read the stickies on proper cartridge alignment.

rgds, sreten.

http://www.project-audio.com/inhalt/...nual_rpm13.pdf