Garrott vs Soundsmith

I took the time to read your earlier post on the Garrott history, Chakster.

Wow! That's some backstory. Interesting.

@nandric 

Everything has been covered here. Andreoli is an artisan, who I suspect gets bored with producing the same product over and over - once they have mastered or achieved their goals on a particular design, they then look for a new challenge. This is their nature. As far as I am aware Andreoli's products are produced either in very very small runs or to order, and then are never seen again. I have never seen another phono 
such that I own - it may be a one off, or like me other owners will never sell.

As far as cartridges go, he has praised the Neumann and the Ikeda cantileverless cartridges, opining that they are one of the very few cartridges that can mimic the cutterhead in payback.

And yes his argument for spherical tips is based principally on the fact that all pivots arms have tracking error, and he believes the spherical tip is the least damaging in terms of tracking error distortion.

For what its worth - if you listen to the venerable Denon 103 - although not particularly transparent, it does have a rhythmic coherency to the sound that more "high end" cartridges can be lacking.

So this is not his ’’shop’’ or company.

@nandric The shop owner is his cousin

The owner of the Swiss hi-fi shop "Dietiker-Humbel" is Andreoli’s cousin

Bluelectric - this is correct brand name, i’m not sure who’s the owner, but Magic Diamond, Silver Spirit, Virus cartridges and even Virus Phono Stange are all Bluelectic.

See what i can find about phono stage ...

Bluelectic Virus Phono Stage Specs:

• Amplifier Unit: Solid state moving coil output to line level input amplifier with RIAA equalisation
• Equalisation: RIAA equalised record will give flat output +/1db between 20-20kHz
• Subsonic Filter: yes, below 5Hz
• Bandwith: 2Hz to 50kHz internally limited
• Input: impedance / cartridge load: does automatically match to cartridge if source impedance is between 2 to 100 Ohms
• Gain: depending on source impedance of cartridge, typical 60 to 65db
• Recommended Cartridges: Impedance from 2 to 80 Ohms, output 0.25 to 0.6mV / 1kHz output

@dover this is the phono stage you have or it’s another model ?

Dear chakster , your curioslty is remarkable. It seems you can
find whatever you are looking for. I get tired after two hours behind
my laptop. 
I thought that Dover owns pre-amp from Reto but he obviously owns
phono-pre. Curious that he named the thing ''Virus'' not because of
Corona kind but because this was/is his cheapest cart. But who
can pretend  to understand an genius? But it may be the case that
this one is his cheapest phono-pre. One that Dover can afford and 
keep  sufficient money for this remarkable wine they produce in 
New Zeeland?