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Removable headshells 101

Due to the influence of Raul's thread on MM cartridges, I believe that some of us (perhaps for the first time), have acquired a tonearm/s with a removable headshell?
In my case, there was a vacuum of knowledge or information about what makes a good headshell and for the last 6 months a great deal of my time and effort has been expended in acquiring personal hands-on experience.
Perhaps a Forum to share experiences will help new adherents to this once denigrated (by the High End) segment of tonearm design?
128x128halcro
nandric's avatar
nandric
4,086 posts
 

Well despite all troubles and irritation I still prefer removable headshells. The reasons are many carts and the ''endless'' time

needed to mount a cart on an fast headshell. Alas the situation

is the same as before in the sense of the same annoyance. One

can't chose in this sense between those damn clips or those

damn headshells. I don't believe that attribute ''the best'' can

be used for any headshell but the same can be recommended as

before. Sumiko (alias Jelco HS 25; etc. ) because of price/

qulity relataion, Orsonic 101 ( the heavy kind), Clearaudio titanium

and aluminum and (some) of those AT with screw threads at the

under side. Those must have the ''movable 4 pin connector'' in

order to adjust stylus distance. No such choice is, alas, available

for the clips. All except Clearaudio are hopeless . There are

two kinds:  2mm and 1,5 mm but they never fit. Besides they break

easily. This is more dramatic by fast headshells of course. For my

best carts I use Clearaudio clips and solder them on my own silver

Litz wire. For the other I use Sumiko with its own headshell wire.

Not super but well decente.

2channel8
758 posts
 
Thanks for re-joining, @nandric. Your expertise is always appreciated. Are your tonearms wired with silver? What do you mean by "fast headshells"?
nandric's avatar
nandric
4,086 posts
 

@2channel 8, With ''fast headshell'' I mean not removable kind.

Some of my tonearms are with silver some wit copper wire. I own

two FR-64 with either , Reed 3P with silver and Sumiko 800 with

copper wire. The curious thing is that the most seem to prefer copper

wire by cartridges but not by tonearms and phono-cables.

2channel8
758 posts
 
Interesting. Do you have a favorite arm, or is it basically horses for courses? 
maxson
79 posts
 
In another thread, Halcro talks about pairing plastic bodied carts with metal headshells and metal bodied carts with wooden ones.

Then there's this blog http://zero-distortion.org/micro_seiki_8000_mkii_koetsu_colibri_thoress_airtight/   that talks about matching a Koetsu and a VDHul with headshells and other tweaks to make them sound more similar. This is continued on a What's Best thread linked in the blog post.

Based on that, I ordered a Jelco HS-30 magnesium/rosewood/brass headshell that looks like the original Koetsu headshell to try with my Onyx and Rosewood.
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