Boron Cantilever and Ruby Cantilever, Why Ruby?

Nandric: You have my deepest sympathies; the magic is gone and your life may never be the same ;)

I am curious: do you have any comments as to how your Zyx sounds with Axel's boron/shibata compared to the original Zyx cantilever/stylus?

Now I am no expert as Chakster so clearly pointed out in another thread but my understanding is that some glue is probably used even in situations where the stylus is mounted and attached literally through a hole in the cantilever. It is just that there is less glue in this situation. Most common with aluminum cantilevers as I believe has been pointed out, but also in use on sapphire cantilevers. Seems not to be the case with boron. 

The Zyxillion dollar question with respect to the Airy 3 is whether the stylus is even mounted into boron. It's almost certain that Zyx's .3 mm boron rod measurement refers specifically to the smaller section of the cantilever closest to the cartridge body. The .3 mm boron rod is pretty standard Namiki fare (I have a couple here with spec sheets). 

It would certainly appear that this is a "telescoped" cantilever with the section in which the stylus is mounted clearly larger in diameter than the rest of the cantilever and quite possibly made from a different material and then attached to the boron rod. This, in and of itself, is not really contradictory to anything that Zyx states in its marketing literature. 

I'm also curious, Lew, if your Universe uses this type of cantilever/stylus or something more traditional? Should be pretty easily visible. A friend of mine just mounted a Universe in the past month or two; couldn't make it out of town to visit him in the past few weeks and may have to wait until Spring to check it out-if he still has it by then LOL. He is a bit of a vinyl fetishist! But you would think if this kind of method was the be all/end all the Universe models would be using it. 

With respect to the two different mounting techniques, they obviously each have their proponents. Less glue clearly in the so called "pressure fit" through the cantilever technique but I have read that on the other side of the coin the "more glue on solid cantilever" focuses on the idea that butting the end of the stylus up against the solid cantilever and then essentially adding the glue like a welding fillet around the stylus results in more structural integrity.

Cynic that I am, I cannot help but think that the veritable torrent of Universe variants that we have seen in the US over the past 3-5 years (Uni II, Uni Premium, Uni this, Uni that, and now Uni III) is due to the realization on the part of ZYX that by introducing new models with ever better review comments, it is possible to double and even triple the original price of the original Uni without eliciting screams of anguish from the faithful (because after all the newest version is always the best), thereby enriching those in the chain of production.

I have a neighbor who is like hdm's friend; he is upgrading his phono systems at least every 6 months.  At a point in time when he still owned a pair of Sound Lab speakers that he bought from me (the sound of which I therefore knew quite well), I heard the original Uni in a Talea tonearm.  I am not easily impressed, but the Uni blew me away with its, I hate to say it, holographic presentation.  (HP first coined this term, and I generally regard him as the king of blather and at the same time maybe the best audio reviewer ever.)  Anyway, when I had the opportunity to purchase one at a very good price from one of our colleagues here on the Analog Forum, I jumped on it.  I am not sorry.  If the subsequent re-iterations of the original Uni are as much better than the original as they are said to be, I guess even greater pleasures are out there to be had. But one or another of my MM or MI cartridges may be better yet.

@hdm

my understanding is that some glue is probably used even in situations where the stylus is mounted and attached literally through a hole in the cantilever

Right, i will add pictures for you to compare retipped (glued) diamonds to the original diamonds on some exotic and conventional cantilevers.

You will not see as much amount of glue as you can see on re-tipped carts:

1) Retipped stylus by SoundSmith (picture from another user)

2) Technics 205c mk4 Retipped by Axel (this and the rest of the pics below taken by me)


Simply compare to the originals (almost no glue):

3) Technics 205c mk4 Original laser etched hollow pipe boron cantilever with nude Elliptical diamond.

4) ZYX Airy 3 Boron cantilever with pressure-fitted diamond with ZYX unique method.

5) Original pressure-fitted Replicant 100 diamond on Aluminum cantilever of my SPU Royal G mkII

6) Original pressure-fitted Shibata diamond on Beryllium cantilever of my Victor X-1II

7) Original preasure-fitted Elliptical diamond on titanium cantilever of the Victor X-1IIe

Chakster: 

You are completely missing my point which in this thread is much less about retips in general and more about the two different stylus mounting techniques. You obviously feel the through mount is superior; I am not absolutely convinced.  

And lets be clear, with respect to retipping (perhaps we are into semantics here), it's very possible to have a retipper/rebuilder replace the entire cantilever assembly with one that has the stylus through mounted. It can be done with cheap eliptical styli on aluminum cantilevers and line contact or microridge styli on sapphire cantilevers. Those styli will show/have no more glue than your beloved Zyx. 

It's simply a matter of changing the entire cantilever instead of just the diamond. 

But I get it: you don't like retips/rebuilds and I'm sure that you would not like the idea of removing/cutting an older cantilever and grafting a new one on, even with a through mount stylus probably. 

Which would be ironic, though, in light of the strong possibility that in principle your Zyx might essentially be doing the same thing right from the get go. 

With respect to cantilever material though (the original topic here) I've come to the conclusion that my preference is boron. I am generally not a big fan of aluminum and I find boron to be a little bit more neutral/relaxed/less forced sounding and kind of mid hall in presentation compared to ruby or sapphire which I find to be a bit more up front in terms of presentation. As a generalization, I also think that boron is more forgiving of surface noise and quieter in the groove than other cantilever materials with the exception of beryllium.

The only cartridge I owned with a beryllium cantilever though was a Shure V15 Type VMR many years ago. Very smooth and very quiet in the groove, but I also found it very boring. 

Preferring boron means that, unless I want to spring for the magical Zyx ;), I'm pretty likely to be stuck with the more glue around the stylus option, regardless of whether I retip or buy new.