Assistance Identifying an Ikeda Cartridge
With that said very first result on eBay. Exactly as Edgewear said.... https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F264227689722 |
@neonknight Just look at ALL Ikeda cartridges here, hope you will find yours. The J.R. is just OEM for US market, normally overpriced compared to genuine Ikeda for Japanese market. BTW only cantilever-less design is worth the attention, some of them are very rare, this is what Ikeda-San assembled by himself, new Ikeda cartridges are no longer made by the master (RIP). I was lucky to buy Ikeda 9 III on dedicated headshell for my FR64s tonearm with B-60. And later purchased Ikeda IT-345 tonearm, it was the old arm, not the new CR-1. No time to compare those beauties, probably next year. |
@edgewear Thanks for the information! It certainly is appreciated. So as I read this the gold body cantileverless cartridges that Ikeda built were upper tier offerings, irregardless of what they were named? The Kanji labeled cart was likely a domestic product, and probably a forerunner of the Rex in terms of branding, but looks to be the same architecture? This cartridge sounds lovely, the owner who had this did not play it much. He was much more a digital guy, and had this table with about 150 audiophile pressing records total. Ikeda Sound Labs no longer rebuilds these cartridges, so its going to be in the realm of the retipper. I wonder if those who rebuild London Decca would be a good choice for servicing it in the future. I also considered VAS as it is a domestic company to me. At the moment I am just gathering information, and trying to line up a future plan for whenever this is going to be required. |
So I just hooked this up to prove things are working. This table and cartridge are glorious! Some of the best analog I have ever heard. I hooked it up to the Miyajima SUT and the Graham Slee phono stage. I had to use a pair of QED interconnects scavenged from my audio box between the SUT and the phono stage, and a pair of unshielded VH Audio interconnects between the table and SUT. Not a spec of noise. Once the cartridge hit the record it was utter magic. This table and cart are not going ANYWHERE. This is just lovely. |
Did you ever looked on the link i gave you ? However I find no reference to an Ikeda 9 anywhere on the net. Is this the first Ikeda cartridge? All IKEDA cartridges are here and you can check specs and prices for each of them. There are so many variations of the 9 model as you can see, the latest are far superior to the old (first 9) and much more expensive. You can send your cart to Expert Stylus in UK as our Nandric did as far as i know. |
