Cartridge ISOLATION; What Say You?

Elliot, I am still stewing, because you said “Lew’s thing is ugly”. My wife refuses to comment.

The ugly truth is none of us understands the physics well enough to judge the Enabler out of context, where context is one’s own ears and one’s own audio system. My hunch is that results will vary according to cartridge construction and compliance, headshell composition, tonearm damping, effective mass, and bearing stability, etc. So insults and invective have no place in this discussion. If you’re interested, give it a shot and report back here stating the cartridge and tonearm you use, at minimum. Saying “I loved it”, or “I hated it”, doesn’t help.

https://www.zotefoams.com/product/azote/evazote/1st thing that comes up when I google "closed cell, crosslinked ethylene copolymer" as taken from The Cartridge Mans website. Used in sporting goods.
Anyway, I subscribe to the closed loop philosophy of tying the cartridge to the tonearm to the platter spindle. Any movement or damping of movement between the two will result in an inaccurate reading of the record grooves. Will it sound different? I'm sure but lots of things can make your music sound different, doesn't necessary mean it's better and in almost all cases it isn't.
BillWojo

great find Bill.

same site, variation: added property: static-dissipative

https://www.zotefoams.com/product/azote/plastazote/

lewm, now I know it's Lew M

That was funny, give my apologies to the wife.

It’s about Jitter getting into the tonearm and back into the cartridge isn’t it?

It’s about less rigid fastening of the cartridge body, no matter how thin, to the arm isn’t it? This UGLY thing is quite thick.

And, the reviewer (not the isolator’s maker) mentioned a less rigid fastening of the tonearm base to the plinth, a double whammy of some, even if infinitesimal, movement.

Jitter into/back out of the arm, if acknowledged, is unwanted movement, sooooo, isolate from jitter? a speck of isolation (movement) reduces the jitter going/thus reduces the jitter feedback?

That's what makes the Strain-Gauge, supposedly essentially Jitter Free so tempting to me.

By Jove I think he's got it!  

Sounds like you've been watching Ledermann and know the importance of lowering moving mass. Soundsmith MI carts have much lower moving mass than MC, and strain gauge has even less moving mass than MI. This is huge, and has a lot to do with the outstanding performance. If you read the reviews SG1 is cost no object performance for what works out to be quite reasonably attainable cost.  

This still leaves the question of cartridge vibration control. Always prefer vibration control as more precise than isolation. There is no true isolation ever, but we can tune frequency and amplitude, and this is vibration control. 

With the cartridge we want some combination of materials structured so as to hold the cartridge firmly in a fixed relationship to the head shell, and yet at the same time have just enough flexibility on a micro level to dissipate cartridge vibration and not reflect it all right back down into the stylus.