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Installed A Kiseki Black Heart Today. Lovely Cartridge

Last year I sent off a Kiseki Black Heart to Allclear Audio for a new diamond. I checked it briefly when it returned, and set it aside. During the fall I also located a lovely first generation Sota Sapphire turntable. I also acquired a low mass version of the Audiomods Series Six tonearm for this table. I had a Sota Cosmos arm board that was cut for a SME arm, and was able to repurpose it for this installation. I put it all together and ran my Ortofon MC2000 on it. 

This afternoon I thought it would be interesting to install the Black Heart. So I put it on and finished the alignment. These long body designs where the cantilever is hidden underneath the body are truly a pain to align, but it is amazing what you can do with an iPhone these days. 

I finished the install and hooked the table back up to a Musical Fidelity NuVista Vinyl phono stage. The sound is warm, textured, layered, and utterly captivating. Allclear did a great job replacing the diamond as this cartridge is utterly silent in the groove. I am playing Seasons by Gabriel Lee at the moment and it sounds just lovely. 

What amazes me is how a cartridge of this vintage sounds so fine. The Black Heart was released in the late 1980's and had a price tag of $2400 it seems. I did find a review in a print magazine an internet acquaintance sent me about an Absolute Sound review for the cartridge, and apparently the reviewer liked is better than the TOTL Lapis Lazuli, which sold for around $5000 at that time. I have no idea if that is true, as it seems so few of that cartridge were produced and are probably in the hands of the most ardent collectors now. 

 

I like to believe cartridge technology marches on. With improved materials, more sophisticated engineering, and precision engineering techniques...well...today's cartridges should be better. But with listening to the Black Heart, some doubts can be raised. Now this is not a colorless and utterly transparent cartridge. The Black Heart seems to be shaded to the romantic side of music, but not in a way that gloms over the beauty of the music. In the past I had read where the goal of the original Kiseki was to out Koetsu Koetsu. You can see that play out I suppose. 

All I know is that the Black Heart is a fine cartridge. It makes me wonder what the earlier Gold and Silverspot cartridges were like. Of course there are a few versions of the Purpleheart. But I wonder if any are worth seeking out, or if the Black Heart is innately superior to them. 

All I can say is these cartridges are worth seeking out and refurbishing. 

neonknight
whart's avatar
whart
3,069 posts
 

Good for you. I never heard one back in the day, but remember them, and heard the same story re the Dutch fellow's dissatisfaction as a Koetsu distributor/dealer. (This is also the story told about the origins of Lamborghini and Enzo which I always took as apocryphal). The chap that retipped your cartridge has been on another forum (I believe it is the same fellow, named Chris, but he is not using his company name in postings) and says he has sourced the same diamond that Koetsu uses; I have not faced a third party re-work of any Koetsus yet. 

Enjoy~

neonknight OP
406 posts
 

@noromance Soundsmith charges $500 for a diamond only replacement while Expert Stylus and AllClear charge $350. Expert did not add a surcharge for putting a diamond on a diamond cantilever that the Ortofon Verismo has. 
 

Secondly, I have seen some shoddy epoxy jobs where a Soundsmith technician attached a ruby cantilever. I once bought a Shinnon Red from a seller that had a poor retip done, it was from Soundsmith. 
 

My preference is for the two retipper I mentioned, and have had close to a dozen cartridges done over the years, and every one met my expectations. 

 

noromance's avatar
noromance
9,967 posts
 

@neonknight Noted. Thank you for your valued experience. 

neonknight OP
406 posts
 

@viridian The Purpleheart series of cartridges are probably the most famous of Kiseki., and are beautiful cartridges. I have always found it fascinating that us analog people find beauty in such a small component as a phono cartridge. Tables and tonearms have their distinctive appearance that we can appreciate, but the cartridge is so small in footprint and yet such effort goes into the aesthetics. For instance the Purple Heart is classic in looks, while my Black Heart is far more plain looking. The grain and finish are significantly coarser in comparison, but apparently it is made from the heartwood of an ebony tree.

Kiseki also built a couple of Agate series cartridges, and while I would be interested in hearing them, the stone bodies are not visually appealing to me. I would like to hear the earlier Blue Goldspot cartridges, but those are starting to climb in price compared to what they used to sell for. Of course I would snap up a Lapis Lazuli if one came available at a sane price. But I have never seen one for sale.

On the Kiseki page they say Dynavector was not the builder of their cartridges. They also offered a high output line under the name Miltek. It makes me wonder if Excel was the builder. Of course Sugano came from Supex, so it might have been them also. But it is all conjecture, and it surprises me that no one in our hobby has any kind of direct knowledge about the builder. I would think a retipper who has been into them would be able to identify the tells of construction to make an educated guess. 

viridian's avatar
viridian
5,139 posts
 

Excel makes sense, I too wish that we could know more as well. I don't trust anything on the Kiseki page as Mr. Van Dungen promoted the myth that the cartridges were the work of the fictional character Goro Focadu and that the diamonds were polished with human hair.

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