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Your tone arm is likely too heavy for that cartridge. The average school record player didn't have a tone arm that thick or heavy looking. If you can somehow adust the tracking force by moving a spring, that should help it a lot. If it can't be adjusted, you need to investigate getting a new cartridge that can take a heavy tone arm.
If you look at the part that contains the needle while it's playing the record, it shouldn't "give" a lot with the pressure of the tone arm. From your description, it almost sounds like it's flexing under the extra weight and maybe the black plastic sides of the cartridge are scraping the record.
I've worked on many, many school record players with the 81 and 89T cartridges and they're very sturdy, but they don't need a lot of tone arm weight. As radionut says, 6-8 grams. If you can take a few more shots of the inner workings of the tone arm, we can tell you if it has any adjustments.
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