Ortofon SPU Cartridges

I have two SPU's classic E and Royal and they are great for Vocal's, Small Jazz, small intimate band's ands similar.
I find both track very well (Ortofon AS-309S) buit they don't do rock n roll, electronic ect as well as current MC's.

Great 2nd cartridge.

I run a Royal N, which has the Replicant stylus but is without the headshell so can be used on a one piece arm. I use a Schröder Reference and the SPU replaced a Transfiguration Proteus, initially as a stopgap to satisfy my curiosity while I got the Proteus repaired. I had to add a bit of weight to the headshell but Schröder do a brass cartridge mounting plate to replace the standard one that adds 5g and this is enough to get the resonance in the right range. Tracking weight is 3g on the Royal N and I don’t have problems with mistracking. My initial impression was that there was more substance to the sound, this cartridge is on home ground with classical music giving a piano proper weight and a great sense of scale to orchestral music. To get it to play rock and roll convincingly took a bit of work and I found it was important not to overtighted the bolt attaching the cartridge mount to the headshell and also the grub screw that secures the counterweight but this may well be specific to the Schröder arm. When I say don’t overtighten I mean just barely enough to hold it in place. The actual cartridge bolts were done up using the Ortofon supplied tools which don’t allow more than about 3Ncm of torque. I also found that there was a very narrow adjustment of VTA and VTF where the music really came to life but whether that holds for other arms I don’t know, most used for the normal SPUs don’t seem to allow for such fine adjustment. I’m two year on the Royal N now  and not missing the Proteus, which is at least now with the retipper (Ana Mighty Sound in Paris).

Oh and if using a SUT pay attention to the cartridge impedance, not all SPUs are the same. The Royal want’s no more than a 1:20 but only has 0.2mV, that would be a bit quiet into my MM phonostage which has only 35dB of gain so I use an active MC stage with 64dB and no SUT, some of the other SPUs will take a 1:30 SUT quite happily.

For those of you who use SPUs, what tonearm(s) have you found that work? Please share all the tonearms you've used that can accept a heavy cartridge like the SPUs.

I've recently read in my owners manual for my Jelco 750L that, even with the optional heavy weight, the maximum weight it can handle is 22g. So, 8 - 10 grams below what an SPU weighs.