Dynavector cartridges, old and new

After release of the $5k ART-1000 the price for Victor MC-L1000 jumped to the stratosphere. This MC-L1000 was an inspiration for the Audio-Technica designer.

Those cartridges with printed coil is very fragile and 90% of them have some problems with output, normally one channel is dead or even both.

The Victor MC-1 was the first Victor Direct Coupled cartridge and i bought a few samples, one of them has arrived, but one channel is dead. I also got my free broken sample from Nikola. I am waiting for the 3-rd sample, fingers crossed.

SoundSmith reported this upon my request: "It is typically nearly impossible to repair the foil conductors on these. It depends where the failure is."

Many years ago my virtual friend discovered a bunch of NOS MC-1 dead stock on Grand Canaria island at some old vinyl shop. At that time i was fascinated by my AT ART-2000 and refused to buy NOS Victor MC-1 from him, the price was acually very low, i regret it now (when all of his stock sold out).  

Dear @lewm : ""  The motion of the stylus has to be transmitted to coils or magnets in order for transduction to occur. ""

Rigth and for that happens it needs that exist some kind of compliance for the stylus track LP grooves, normally through a cantilever that's the way till today.

Manufacturers and audiophiles use the cantileverless expression but not to really says is cantilever-less but to make some differentation to the normal cartridges design.

With no compliance for movements exist no recorded signal to transducer motor cartridge.

Obviously that the horizontal compliance is way critical but the vertical one has a role too. Normally the compliance figure in many cartridges designs is the same but in other cartridge designs the compliance values are different for horizontal motion than vertical one.

Compliance and cantilever length are very important in the quality cartridge performance but the cantilever shape and build material ti's too because we are talking here about vibrations/movements added by resonances developed down there that all are converted to music signal.

A shorter cantilever resonates and vibrates different from a longer one and not neccesarily better than the longer cantilever but cantilever build material makes always a difference because boron and diamond has different characteristics that has influence in what we listen.

There are several cartridges that outperforms the Karat 13D or the Ikeda REX 9 or the Decca's. A cartridge is the sum of its parts: overall design, part's quality, quality  excecution of design and cartridge voicing. At the end a cartridge is the exclusive success achieved by the own designer targets and how he looks MUSIC reproduction by his design and how he surrounded it in the audio systems he used to made the cartridge voicing.

R.

I think we pretty much agree on this, Raul.

Raul, sure there are cartridges that outperform Karat 13D or even Decca Reference in certain environment but not necessarely in all high tech stereo systems. There are so many different combinations of TAs, TTs and cartridges that even good old Michael can´t tell the truth.