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Who needs a Diamond Cantilever...? 💍

So suddenly, there seems to be a trend for Uber-LOMC cartridges released with Diamond Cantilevers...😱
As if the High-End MC cartridges were not already overpriced....?!
Orofon have released the MC-ANNA-DIAMOND after previously releasing the Limited Edition MC-CENTURY...also with Diamond Cantilever.
Then there’s the KOETSU BLOODSTONE PLATINUM and DYNAVECTOR KARAT 17D2 and ZYX ULTIMATE DIAMOND and probably several more.

But way back in 1980....Sony released a Diamond-Cantilevered version of its fine XL-88 LOMC Cartridge.
Imaginatively....they named this model the XL-88D and, because it was the most expensive phono cartridge in the world (costing 7500DM which was more expensive than a Volkswagen at the time)....Sony, cleverly disguised this rare beast to look EXACTLY like its ’cheap’ brother with its complex hybrid cantilever of "special light metal held by a carbon-fibre pipe both being held again by a rigid aluminium pipe".
The DIAMOND CANTILEVER on the 88D however......was a thing of BEAUTY and technological achievement, being formed from ONE PIECE OF DIAMOND including the stylus 🤯🙏🏽

I’ve owned the XL-88 for many years and recently discovered that it was my best (and favourite) cartridge when mounted in the heavy Fidelity Research S-3 Headshell on the SAEC WE-8000/ST 12" Tonearm around my VICTOR TT-101 TURNTABLE.
Without knowing this in advance.....I would not have been prepared to bid the extraordinary prices (at a Japanese Auction Site) that these rare cartridges keep commanding.
To find one in such STUNNING CONDITION with virtually no visible wear was beyond my expectations 😃

So how does it sound.....?
Is there a difference to the standard XL-88?
Is the Diamond Cantilever worth the huge price differential?
Is the Pope a Catholic....?

This cartridge simply ’blows my mind’...which is hard to do when I’ve had over 80 cartridges on 10 different arms mounted on two different turntables 🤯
As Syntax said on another Thread:-
When you have 2 identical carts, one regular cantilever and the other one with diamond cantilever (Koetsu Stones for example), the one with diamond cantilever shows more details, is a bit sharper in focus and the soundstage is a bit deeper and wider. They can sound a bit more detailed overall with improved dynamics
I’ll leave it at that for the time being. I will soon upload to YouTube, the sound comparisons between the two Sony versions on my HEAR MY CARTRIDGES THREAD.

But now I’ve bought myself a nightmarish scenario.......
There is no replacement stylus for this cartridge!
There is no replacement cantilever for this cartridge!
Each time I play records with it, I am ’killing’ it a bit more 🥴😥
If I knew how long I had left to live......I could program my ’listening sessions’ 🤪
But failing this.....I can’t help but feel slightly uncomfortable listening to this amazing machine.
128x128halcro
edgewear
543 posts
 
You're welcome, Halcro!

If the assumption that the sound of a cartridge is determined by its performance as a system - built from various part that all have different sonic characteristics  - is correct, than the cantilever is just one of the ingredients to 'tailor' the sound. Just as coil and body materials are, as my little 'shoot out' with the Colibri's  - with boron cantilevers and vdH tip as the only constant - made abundantly clear (I wish I had the opportunity then to record these differences, as Halcro is doing now).

Other manufacturers use the same motor and coils and offer different cantilevers and/or tips as 'options'. Like the obscure Ozawa and Klipsch cartridges I happen to love, which offered aluminum, boron and ruby (and even diamond) cantilevers in otherwise the same carts with identical specs. But they surely will have sounded different, otherwise what's the point? Even today, Matsudaira san offers duraliminum and boron as cantilever options for MySonic Lab. In all these cases the boron versions are more expensive than (dur)aluminum, but does that imply they are better? Not necessarily, just different.

So the use of aluminum cantilever has nothing to do with 'ignorance' on the designer's part (as he who should not be mentioned seems to think), but with deliberate design choices. Sometimes for purely sonic reasons (as with Ikeda, Takeda and Brakemeier), sometimes to deliver different options at different price point (as Matsudaira and many others). Including Mori, who was apparently given 'carte blanche' with the 88D to extract the maximum performance from his 'figure 8' design invention. I'm sure the results are spectacular.


halcro's avatar
halcro OP
2,664 posts
 
Frogman and Edgewear are right of course...As Dover so eloquently observed....
Cartridges are always a sum of the parts - a diamond cantilever on an average cartridge is at best just a more articulate average cartridge.
The XL-55 and XL-88 obviously have a unique MOTOR design by Mori San.....but why they sound so differently to each other is a mystery only Mori could explain 🤭
When all other Diamond Cantilevers are two-piece constructions like THIS and THIS and THIS........there might also be some Mori 'magic' when he can imagine Diamond Cantilever and Stylus as a one-piece construction like THIS 🤗
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rauliruegas
12,901 posts
 
Dear @halcro : """ in this Thread you are hearing two ’identical’ cartridges with the ’cantilever material’ the only difference. """

identical?, who says that. In this thread exist at least two posts that say different " things " about. In one of them the owner of two Koetsu similar models one with boron cantilever and the other with diamond and he said are not identical/similar and in the other post you can read that designers of same models: one with diamond cantilever and the other with different cantilever material are not similar because the designer takes more care in the whole cantilever diamond design/build cartridge as : tigther tolerances, hand selected stylus, better assembling cartridge body, even calibration to " zero " tolerance specs, etc, etc.

You have many examples of that kind. Example: Stanton 981 model is similar to the 980 cartridge, nothing change down there but that the 981 is CALIBRATED model and its sounds is better with better quality overall performance than the 980 and both use the same cantilever material and everything the " same " but calibration.

88 and 88D are way different cartridges.


""" I do believe that ’choice’ of ’cantilever material’ may be a ’primary’ element in the initial concept of cartridge designers... """

again, whom says that? when cantilever is only one of several parts in the overall cartridge design and certainly not the most important. cartridge motor is the important subject down there like the coils configuration in the Sony models.

One ce J.Carr posted to some one that ask him: " in a cartridge which makes more difference for the better: cantilever build material or stylus shape ? " and JC posted that " cantilever build material was more important " but certainly not the primary characteristic for a cartridge design.


Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.
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rauliruegas
12,901 posts
 
Dear @edgewear : """  So the use of aluminum cantilever has nothing to do with 'ignorance' on the designer's part ... ""

could be butb in some cases low knowledge design levels is one of the reason for aluminum cantilevers.

In this thread I posted about: 

"""  Aluminum in the FR was what the designer like it more when he voiced his cartridges. Cantilever is an important part in the whole cartridge desing but only one part and in the voicing of the manufacturers we are in the " hands " of the designer bias to some kind of sound he was looking for.

Aluminum in the Magic Diamond was or is used not because is the best material but first because use the same cartridge motor of the Denon 103 ( aluminum cantilever. ) and second because was what the biased manufacturer like it.

The use of aluminum material in cantilevers has other reasons additional of what I posted.

One of those reasons could be the low knowledge level of the manufacturer to design something better because if that design only sounds good with aluminum in the cantilever then something is wrong in that design and this is true when the design is a copy of other cartridge where exist true inhabilities to make a design.  ""


Btw, like you I really like the Colibri and owned 4-5 samples but the platinum and blackwood one. I owned the Colibri with wood body but was a red/rose one.
Now, the best Colibri cartridge I experienced was one of the first models that cames with small soft plastic body and with cooper coils with an output level of 0.22mv. Till today the best Colibri I experienced in my system and in other systems.


R.

chakster's avatar
chakster
6,144 posts
 
So the one piece diamond/stylus cantilever combo on Sony XL88D can't be repaired, because this unique type of cantilever is not available anymore. But it can't be even re-tipped because the stylus and cantilever is one piece of gemstone. The life span of the Elliptical stylus is 600 hrs ? Actually Sony called it "Super Elliptical", so maybe a bit more. But what's then ? 
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