Thoughts on moving from a 1200G to Sota Saphire or above
removable head shell kills it for me. For you, but not for me, nearly all Japanese tonearms have a removable headshell (or even removable armtube with integrated headshell), it’s an amazing feature to swap cartridges for those who have many cartridges. It’s much more difficult on my Reed 3p for example (check my system) |
The audio establishment sold us the idea that headshells were inherently unstable mounted at the end of an arm wand, so now we’ve got a lot of expensive tonearms with fixed headshells. Around the same time they sold us the idea that bass and treble controls and loudness controls were mucking up the sound quality of our music, so they’ve been deleted. Rightly or wrongly these “innovations” that were near to universally adopted have certainly reduced the cost of manufacture, while prices have gone skyward. |
Perhaps, @lewm , but while we don't want to go down the headshell stability rabbithole here, I'd argue IF integrated headshells are generally equal or better than removable, it comes down to whether or not someone's personal best investment is in multiple carts or just one better one. If you have many mono LPs, and want to swap regularly a mono cart and a stereo cart...that makes sense. But many of us would benefit more getting the best cart we can and using it all the time. Personally, I've had some fun doing quick swap shootouts with friends for sh*ts & giggles, but that's generally all it amounted to for me. Different horses...Cheers, Spencer |
I have a sapphire w some upgrades, modified Sumiko FT-3 ( CF arm tube, ridged lock VTA tower / wiring ) Hana ML and your same Herron phono. I also have in a different system Brinkmann Bardo / Triplaner / Lyra. I think you should spend $ on Fire Level or better IC out of table and phono, different cartridge and isolation for table. Maybe not in that order…. |
