MY SONIC LAB Cartridges

I know NOTHING about Sonic Lab carts but, based on it’s Japanese lineage, it’s made by guys that are OBSESSIVE and perfectionist.

That alone to me, would be enough assurance the lineup is solid.

I can’t remember much about anything Peter said about the cactus, except once they are "cured" they are a "perfect" material.

Spending north of a couple kilobucks is out of my league. But if it was, it’s nice to know I can get that $5K+ cart rebuilt to last longer than me with Soundsmith, AND it here, in the good ol USof A!

Have a blowout with that Sonic Lab, you send it to Mofi, they send it back to Japan....that would be a drag.

Mijostyn, go see Jeff Catalano @ Highwater, next time you're in the city. He’s a cool dude with esoteric stuff. Last time he made it to a Cal show, we ended up geeking out over the LP’s both he and I played. I had a Bowie album to play(Pinups), he pulled out a sealed copy of Spiders?(I cant recall, it may have been Alladin..whatever)

I think we carried on more about the LP’s than listen to his always amazing setups.

Site down now
https://highwatersound.com/

Duraluminum is an outdated marketing term for.....wait for it.........aluminum. I worked in the cycling manufacturing industry years back and learned a few things about aluminum pedigree.

Wrong.

Duraluminum is an ALLOY of aluminium, copper, manganese, magnesium, iron and silicon. It is NOT aluminium.
Duraluminum is lighter but harder than steel, its mechanical properties are quite different to aluminium.

I hope the other things you learnt during your employment in the cycling manufacturing industry were founded on fact.

tablejockey brings up a very interesting point. Why is a multi kilobuck cartridge using a cheap aluminum cantilever? One could ask another question, what does one really get for one’s money when you buy a multi kilobuck cartridge? I don’t believe that the sum of the parts of any of the cartridges one could name will add to but a mere fraction of the price asked. 

Irrelevant - the Hyoereminent uses a Duraluminum cantilever.
Duraluminum is quite different to aluminium - see my above post.

At least with the Mysoniclab you are getting the original cartridge designed by the guy that oem's many of the megabuck alternatives.
it has ultralow impedance with reasonable output, compared to other designs - this has significant advantages in transmitting the signal to the phono without loss of information and distortion. There is years of research gone into his designs.

I find that the three or four of my 20 or so cartridges that I like the best tend to sound quite the same to me if I were to close my eyes. And I like to think that this is because I am drawn to their neutrality more than anything else. In other words they do everything right and the result is they are going toward a central character that I seem to prefer.Oddly enough, two of these are MC, one is an MM, and one of these is an MI cartridge. 

If you cant hear significant differences between MC & MM cartridges you must be deaf. If you think that your favourite cartrdiges do everything right - you must have low standards. There are no cartridges that do everything right regardless of price - every design is a subject to the designers own aspirations or goals and what compromises are acceptable to the designer in order to achieve their particular goals.

EMT JSD's for me, very musical, neutral and use Alnico magnets.