Boron Cantilever and Ruby Cantilever, Why Ruby?

I will repeat it again just to leave it here:

This is original ZYX Boron cantilever of the Airy III cartridge, picture taken on my macro lens. Look at the stylus. The stylus itself is not glued to the cantilever as you can see. The cantilever material is solid Boron φ 0.30mm - this is what stated in the manual. Micro-Ridge Solid Diamond (0.07mm) goes throught the cantilever’s collar, this thicker part of the cantilever also black (like boron itself) @nandric @lewm

I know only one company what was able to mount their nude diamond through the boron pipe cantilever using laser etched techniques. It was Matsushita back in the ’70s. But ZYX cantilever is Boron Rod, maybe the collar on Airy’s cantilever is Boron Pipe? The collar is black and does not looks like aluminum.

If anyone can post some other stylus/cantilever combo like that please do it, to my knowledge ZYX has its unique cantilevers. This is why Nakatsuka-San never offering a factory re-tip for any of his cartridges, they can only exchange an old cart to a brand new cart with new serial number.

Do not expect that any third-party vendor can offer something like that, their method is completely different, so anyone who will retip ZYX with some third-party vendor will lose its magic!

Nandric: You have my deepest sympathies; the magic is gone and your life may never be the same ;)

I am curious: do you have any comments as to how your Zyx sounds with Axel's boron/shibata compared to the original Zyx cantilever/stylus?

Now I am no expert as Chakster so clearly pointed out in another thread but my understanding is that some glue is probably used even in situations where the stylus is mounted and attached literally through a hole in the cantilever. It is just that there is less glue in this situation. Most common with aluminum cantilevers as I believe has been pointed out, but also in use on sapphire cantilevers. Seems not to be the case with boron. 

The Zyxillion dollar question with respect to the Airy 3 is whether the stylus is even mounted into boron. It's almost certain that Zyx's .3 mm boron rod measurement refers specifically to the smaller section of the cantilever closest to the cartridge body. The .3 mm boron rod is pretty standard Namiki fare (I have a couple here with spec sheets). 

It would certainly appear that this is a "telescoped" cantilever with the section in which the stylus is mounted clearly larger in diameter than the rest of the cantilever and quite possibly made from a different material and then attached to the boron rod. This, in and of itself, is not really contradictory to anything that Zyx states in its marketing literature. 

I'm also curious, Lew, if your Universe uses this type of cantilever/stylus or something more traditional? Should be pretty easily visible. A friend of mine just mounted a Universe in the past month or two; couldn't make it out of town to visit him in the past few weeks and may have to wait until Spring to check it out-if he still has it by then LOL. He is a bit of a vinyl fetishist! But you would think if this kind of method was the be all/end all the Universe models would be using it. 

With respect to the two different mounting techniques, they obviously each have their proponents. Less glue clearly in the so called "pressure fit" through the cantilever technique but I have read that on the other side of the coin the "more glue on solid cantilever" focuses on the idea that butting the end of the stylus up against the solid cantilever and then essentially adding the glue like a welding fillet around the stylus results in more structural integrity.

Cynic that I am, I cannot help but think that the veritable torrent of Universe variants that we have seen in the US over the past 3-5 years (Uni II, Uni Premium, Uni this, Uni that, and now Uni III) is due to the realization on the part of ZYX that by introducing new models with ever better review comments, it is possible to double and even triple the original price of the original Uni without eliciting screams of anguish from the faithful (because after all the newest version is always the best), thereby enriching those in the chain of production.

I have a neighbor who is like hdm's friend; he is upgrading his phono systems at least every 6 months.  At a point in time when he still owned a pair of Sound Lab speakers that he bought from me (the sound of which I therefore knew quite well), I heard the original Uni in a Talea tonearm.  I am not easily impressed, but the Uni blew me away with its, I hate to say it, holographic presentation.  (HP first coined this term, and I generally regard him as the king of blather and at the same time maybe the best audio reviewer ever.)  Anyway, when I had the opportunity to purchase one at a very good price from one of our colleagues here on the Analog Forum, I jumped on it.  I am not sorry.  If the subsequent re-iterations of the original Uni are as much better than the original as they are said to be, I guess even greater pleasures are out there to be had. But one or another of my MM or MI cartridges may be better yet.