Fidelity Research cartridges

@edgwear

I’d be interested to know if the cartridges Takeda built for other brands like Mark Levinson, Cello, Red Rose an Krell are identical to either of these three he produced under his own Miyabi banner.

I own the Mark Levinson MLC-1, which as far as I know was the first cartridge he made (at least of the ones mentioned here). It is a magnificent performer and certainly one of the most musical cartridges I’ve ever had the pleasure to hear. But I can’t help wondering if any of the later models are even better. Did anyone here ever compare them?

Red Rose, Krell, Cello, Mark Levinson = Miyabi Standard. It is basically the same cartridge. There was one more incarnation of this model, i forgot the name.

Miyabi MCA is different model from the same era, it is a vintage Miyabi handmade by Takeda San in Japan. This is obscure model !

Later he made Miyabi 47 exclussively for 47 Labs aka Sakura Systems, this model is different from earlier Miyabi MCA.

I have only Miyabi Standard and Miyabi MCA in my collection.

Thanks for sharing your observations! I assumed these were all technically identical to the Miyabi Standard. But I did notice that  Krell had two different model numbers, which suggests there might have been some slight sonic differences. I also noticed that the shape of the body of the various Levinson brands is slightly different than the body of the Krell models and the Miyabi Standard. But I guess these were all just variations on the same theme. And what a theme......

As for other versions, I remember there was also one with a carbon fiber body made for Mobile Fidelity. I'd be curious to hear the influence of the different body material. One reviewer also mentions Klipsch as one of the incarnations, but this is incorrect.

I've seen pictures of the 47Labs model, but that's a rather ugly plastic job compared to the others. The rare Ivory on the other hand looks gorgeous. Apparently this was the first Miyabi model. 

Probably the closest one can get to the sound of the Miyabi Standard from a new cartridge is the Fuuga, a concious attempt to resurrect Takeda's creation.

And here was me being complained at for comparing a Benz lps to and fr7-f to purchase 😉

I knew you will say it, haha
sorry 

Yes, it’s unforgivable to divert attention away from the FR-7, isn’t it? 😉

Getting back on the right - uh - track, changing the P2S distance of the FR-64S (or FX for that matter) when using the FR-7 is not a very good idea.

With P2S distance at 230mm you get perfect Stevenson alignment (the stylus ’hits’ all three ’o’ points on the Feickert protractor). This is clearly what Ikeda had intended. Changing to 231.5mm changes the geometry of the tonearm to Baerwald, but it will not be possible to align the FR-7 to this geometry. At least not according to the Feickert protractor. With the fixed headshell arrangement of the FR-7 there’s no way to adjust this.

I did try the Baerwald geometry with other (adjustable) cartridges, but I don’t hear the sonic benefits compared to Stevenson, so I decided to stick with Ikeda’s original specifications in all cases.