Tønnes –
thank you. Probably, the Black would be most interesting to try, in my system.
Raul – I know
you don’t like tubed phono stages. Yes, there are minuses, but plusses too. It
is not like I go to friends places with solid-state stages and then when I get
home I hear “fake” sound. I suggest we agree to disagree on that one. We agree
on the tonearm, however. The Atlas + SME
V combo has a low ca 7hz frequency. But is it an issue? I thought so, but was
probably wrong. The real reason for the problem (woofer pumping) seems to be
the diamond/cantilever connection gradually going bad, until the diamond got
lose and then finally fell off. It happened after 12-1300 hours (I
recalculated).
The Titan i
has maybe 1800 hours, but happily, after a little adjustment, still runs fine,
although a little worn-sounding. After more adjustments most of the worn sound
(harshness and sibilants, muddy bass) was gone, and I was reminded of what a
great cartridge the Titan i is. Going
from the Clavis to the Titan was a larger step up, for me, than from Titan to
Atlas. But this may also be due to a problem with the Clavis (riding too low).
So yes, a retip and boron cantilever may be a good idea, when the Atlas has
been fixed (for now, I need the Clavis as backup).
My SME V
does not have mistracking issues. Mistracking occurs only when the vinyl groove
is really bad. I did some testing of the arm bearing and found no problems.
Maybe the Atlas tracks best, then Titan, and then Clavis – but they are quite
similar. If the record is reasonably OK and the arm is fully adjusted, there
are no tracking problems. This behavior is very different from the
Souther/Clearaudio Triquartz parallel arm I had before, I never managed to get
it to control the cartridge properly. With
the SME V – no problem. The rigid
construction, materials etc probably means that it can work well even if
resonance is on the low side. The Titan, weighing ca 1 g less than the Atlas,
is less challenging in this respect (and the Clavis, weighing even less). I can
confirm that reducing effective tonearm mass by shifting the counterweight towards
the arm base, taking off the upper bridge, and similar, does not have much
impact on the resonance (testing with the HFN record). It became only a tiny
bit higher, from maybe 7.1 hz to 7.2 if I remember right; it did not seem worth
it.