Halcro, thank you for your review which I very much enjoyed reading. I would not change one word of it. I have now enjoyed many hours listening with my Palladian in my Axiom arm. I also have an FR7f 6 digit and an Aiwon. The Aiwon is to me a wonderful refinement of the FR7f. The Palladian has significantly improved on the Aiwon such that it has taken my system to a new level. The cartridges were aligned with the UNI-Protractor, the best alignment tool I have used, and its unique UNI-DIN tangential curve template.
To me, a sign of system greatness is when I hear a piece of music which has previously made no sense to me, all of a sudden make sense. I am sorry I cannot describe this better. This has only happened to me twice. The first time was several years ago hearing a Jeff Beck track on a CD sourced system with Kinoshita’s large mono power amps driving Kinoshita Monitor RMs in a special purpose room designed by Tom Hidley to studio spec. Tom told me that on his studio grading scale he would give the room a solid 7 out of 10. The track went for me from a mass of jumbled sound to an integrated, meaningful and powerful piece. It was like all of a sudden I heard what Jeff Beck wanted to convey. The second time was recently with the Palladian in my system on playing the “Gone with the Wind” Dan Hicks track on the Bob Wasserman “Duets” album. His voice went from an irritating noise to an artful use of voice that became fascinating. I cannot give higher praise.
I have been in this wonderful hobby of ours for decades and endured endless wars: tube v transistor, this v that. I am still saddened when people in hobbies attack each other. I speculate that this is some tribal throwback to our base genetic survival strategies. I would recommend that you forget the words about this or that design feature and this or that personality, and decide with your ears. We all have different preferences but I cannot imagine an honest enthusiast hearing a well set up Palladian in a good system (by good I mean sounding good – IMHO there is so much over-priced underperforming gear) and not respect this cartridge.
To close, I have to thank Audiogon for introducing me to Dietrich, the man behind Acoustical Systems who previously posted as Dertonarm, and his excellent products. I have also to thank Syntax for answering endless emails from me way back when I was considering buying my Micro Seiki turntable, and numerous others like Halcro for contributing their honest opinions for my consideration. I love our hobby which brings the wonder of music into our homes with high fidelity, and the Internet for enabling this.
