Benz Micro Ruby Z

Thanks Audioquest4life!

I too am loving my Ruby Z. I had thoughts of the SLR Gullwing but stuck with the Ruby Z...the wood body alone is beautiful!

I'll let you know my impressions as I get more listening of it, but I found the rustling noise to be an issue with the grounding of the tonearm to the table/phono preamp. In my case, with the bent bearing on my VPI JMW arm, when the arm moved, the ground connection was not consistent and would drop in and out, that was the problem...but only with the Pass Xono and not the Tom Evans I borrowed.

Weird!

T

Using the Benz re-tip / exchange program from Musical Surroundings the Ruby Z is a substantial upgrade from my previous Benz Wood L. As I understand it the Ruby Z is an S-Class cartridge very similar to the LP-S. The Ruby Z's lighter mass simply allows a wider tonearm compatibility.

I have no direct in home experience with cartridges at this level to compare. I am very satisfied with the Ruby Z

I find the lower you go in resistive loading the farther back and smaller the center image. It gets to be very good sounding at 500 ohms or over. I use 1K and it images nicely and sounds very balanced using a PASS LABS XP-25 and VPI classic 3.0 table.
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The capacative loading seems to have little effect, so I use 100 pF + the tone arm lead capacitance so figure another 60 pF for my 5 foot Belden ICONOCLAST RCA's.
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The RUBY Z is a very natural sounding cartridge, without the hi-fi "zing" so common to many cartridges. The mid range is especially refined although JUST better than the bass definition and treble smoothness. This MC cartridge makes stuff just sound "right" verses trying to change the music to what it wasn't originally.
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If you want some ZING type of thing, or a more aggressive attach speed this isn't your cartridge. For that I use a SUMIKO Blackbird. A LYRA DELOS would be a second choice for a nice but more lively sound. I say second on the DELOS ONLY because it is more expensive, not that the LYRA isn't better overall.

My LPS sounds best into my Ayre preamp at 1000 ohms