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Detachable Head shell or Not?

I am in the process to up my game with some phono system tweaking.

I read in these forums of many people here with multiple arms, multiple cartridges and even multiple turntables.  I am guilty of this myself but moderately compared to so many phono hardware diehards here.

All the continued comments on Talea vs. Schroeder vs. Kuzma, Da Vinci, Tri-Planar, etc., etc, on these forums.  And the flavor of the day cartridge.  One easy way to manage the use of many cartridges, easily swapping between them, and getting down to one turntable would be to run with a tonearm that supports removable head shells or arm tubes.  And yet this does not seem to be widely done here.  Is everybody just too proud of all the pretty phono hardware to admire?

Many highly respected arms of the past, FR 64/66, Ikeda, and now Glanz, Kuzma 4-Point, the new Tru-Glider, all with removable heads.  And the Graham and Da Vinci with removable arm tubes.  These products have a huge fan base and yet there seems to be an equal number of those against any extra mechanical couplings and cable junction boxes, din connections, etc.

I can appreciate having two cartridges, one to bring out that addictive lush bloomy performance and another that shows off that clarity and detail “to die for”.  Being able to easily swap between the two, with hopefully only a quick VTF/VTA change, would be mighty nice.  If too painful a process, I can understand the need for two arms here;  like the idea of going through many LPs in an evening and not being obsessed with tweaking the arm for each.  I hope I never get obsessed to do get to that point.  But for different days/nights, to listen to different kinds of music, it could be mighty nice to swap out one cartridge for another in different head shells without the added cluster and cost of oh please, not another tonearm!.  Do a minute or two of tweaking, ONCE, for that listening session, and then enjoy.  There is always the added risk during the uninstall / install process to damage that prized cartridge.

Is running with a tonearm that has a detachable head shell all that sinful / shameful in the audiophile world ……. or not?  I’d like to hear from those who have achieved musical bliss with removable head shell arms and also from those that if asked to try such a product would likely say, “over my dead body”!

John

jafox
mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 

@au_lait , as long as you are using a low compliance cartridge, go for it. Will it sound better? Not one of us can tell you, but it will feel better and is a lot more reasonable than a lot of other rather silly tweaks. 

This is something I do not understand. We are audiophiles. I should think we like tinkering with our tables. I have no problems changing cartridges on a fixed head shell design. Once I have set them up the first time the cartridges are indexed with marks so I can put them in the exact same position without pulling out a jig. It takes not even ten minutes to change cartridges. One BIG help is a locking tonearm rest. It is a terrible hassle and very dangerous to be chasing floating tonearms with a $10K cartridge. Many arms come with them but many do not such as my Schroder which has no rest at all. Frank thinks they resonate. It is a simple matter to mount one on the plinth.  

lewm
13,021 posts
 

Aulait, my ears tell me there is a benefit associated with a direct wire connection. Is it night and day, and can I measure it? No. As to Richard Mak; I don’t know who he is. Difference I hear is for low output cartridges only. I don’t know why Mijo mentioned compliance. As to removable headshells I think one must pay close attention to the fit between headshell and arm wand, as previously mentioned. Best to use the headshell made for the arm, but there is some cross-compatibility. Ortofon headshells are particularly well made and tend to fit well. Yamamoto and Oyaide too.

aberyclark
1,355 posts
 

The Yamamoto HS-4 is a fantastic headshell

richopp
760 posts
 

Back in the old days (1970's), this was discussed quite a bit.  I believe that the consensus was that the lower mass of a fixed head shell offered the best reproduction.  However, they are difficult to work with, as many have noted, and back then, with Supex, Satin, Decca, AT, etc., there were only a few cartridges to choose from. 

Today, with so many more, I believe I might go for a removable one.  I would guess that there are nice matches for each arm/head shell combo from cartridge makers today that rival some fixed combos, but the two-tone-arm solution may be the one that works best IF you can convince TT people that the extra tone arm and cartridge do not "interfere" with the TT's ability to be as neutral as possible.

Fun times!

frogman
7,441 posts
 

Agree with Lew. Along the same lines as the fixed vs detachable headshell question, if the quality of the wire used to rewire in a continuous run is not at least equal to that of what the arm is presently wired with, as well as that of the cable connecting the arm to the preamp, then the net improvement after rewiring will be lessened; possibly rendered irrelevant. A vote, once again, for the AudioNote silver wire.

Btw, something that doesn’t get mentioned in this “debate”. We all have favorite cabling for our systems. Imagine if one were to decide that our preamp needed to be moved to a different location and instead of the 1 meter tonearm interconnect cable with DIN plug currently used, we would now need 1.5 meter of tonearm interconnect cable.. Does it make sense to, instead of buying a 1.5 meter length of the currently used tonearm interconnect cable, to patch our current one meter cable to a different brand, or model, .5 interconnect? To my way of thinking, that is essentially what happens when not using a continuous run to preamp tonearm wire.

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