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Detachable Head shell or Not?

I am in the process to up my game with some phono system tweaking.

I read in these forums of many people here with multiple arms, multiple cartridges and even multiple turntables.  I am guilty of this myself but moderately compared to so many phono hardware diehards here.

All the continued comments on Talea vs. Schroeder vs. Kuzma, Da Vinci, Tri-Planar, etc., etc, on these forums.  And the flavor of the day cartridge.  One easy way to manage the use of many cartridges, easily swapping between them, and getting down to one turntable would be to run with a tonearm that supports removable head shells or arm tubes.  And yet this does not seem to be widely done here.  Is everybody just too proud of all the pretty phono hardware to admire?

Many highly respected arms of the past, FR 64/66, Ikeda, and now Glanz, Kuzma 4-Point, the new Tru-Glider, all with removable heads.  And the Graham and Da Vinci with removable arm tubes.  These products have a huge fan base and yet there seems to be an equal number of those against any extra mechanical couplings and cable junction boxes, din connections, etc.

I can appreciate having two cartridges, one to bring out that addictive lush bloomy performance and another that shows off that clarity and detail “to die for”.  Being able to easily swap between the two, with hopefully only a quick VTF/VTA change, would be mighty nice.  If too painful a process, I can understand the need for two arms here;  like the idea of going through many LPs in an evening and not being obsessed with tweaking the arm for each.  I hope I never get obsessed to do get to that point.  But for different days/nights, to listen to different kinds of music, it could be mighty nice to swap out one cartridge for another in different head shells without the added cluster and cost of oh please, not another tonearm!.  Do a minute or two of tweaking, ONCE, for that listening session, and then enjoy.  There is always the added risk during the uninstall / install process to damage that prized cartridge.

Is running with a tonearm that has a detachable head shell all that sinful / shameful in the audiophile world ……. or not?  I’d like to hear from those who have achieved musical bliss with removable head shell arms and also from those that if asked to try such a product would likely say, “over my dead body”!

John

jafox
aberyclark
1,355 posts
 

The Yamamoto HS-4 is a fantastic headshell

richopp
760 posts
 

Back in the old days (1970's), this was discussed quite a bit.  I believe that the consensus was that the lower mass of a fixed head shell offered the best reproduction.  However, they are difficult to work with, as many have noted, and back then, with Supex, Satin, Decca, AT, etc., there were only a few cartridges to choose from. 

Today, with so many more, I believe I might go for a removable one.  I would guess that there are nice matches for each arm/head shell combo from cartridge makers today that rival some fixed combos, but the two-tone-arm solution may be the one that works best IF you can convince TT people that the extra tone arm and cartridge do not "interfere" with the TT's ability to be as neutral as possible.

Fun times!

frogman
7,441 posts
 

Agree with Lew. Along the same lines as the fixed vs detachable headshell question, if the quality of the wire used to rewire in a continuous run is not at least equal to that of what the arm is presently wired with, as well as that of the cable connecting the arm to the preamp, then the net improvement after rewiring will be lessened; possibly rendered irrelevant. A vote, once again, for the AudioNote silver wire.

Btw, something that doesn’t get mentioned in this “debate”. We all have favorite cabling for our systems. Imagine if one were to decide that our preamp needed to be moved to a different location and instead of the 1 meter tonearm interconnect cable with DIN plug currently used, we would now need 1.5 meter of tonearm interconnect cable.. Does it make sense to, instead of buying a 1.5 meter length of the currently used tonearm interconnect cable, to patch our current one meter cable to a different brand, or model, .5 interconnect? To my way of thinking, that is essentially what happens when not using a continuous run to preamp tonearm wire.

jafox OP
1,456 posts
 

if the quality of the wire used to rewire in a continuous run is not at least equal to that of what the arm is presently wired with, as well as that of the cable connecting the arm to the preamp, then the net improvement after rewiring will be lessened; possibly rendered irrelevant.

Similar thought when I asked a tonearm vendor if they can put a DIN at the arm's output as I was not all that excited with their cable choice all the way to the preamp.  A vote here for the Stealth Hyperphono.

Imagine if one were to decide that our preamp needed to be moved to a different location and instead of the 1 meter tonearm interconnect cable with DIN plug currently used, we would now need 1.5 meter of tonearm interconnect cable.

If I imagine the 1.5m need in the future, I will purchase a tonearm cable of 1.5m at time of purchase.  The last few tonearms I owned with attached cables all came in 1.5m length.  A 1.5m length over 1m is indeed preferred to provide more spacing between components.  Years ago I got a great deal on a 1m Stealth and I have always managed to work things out with this detachable tonearm cable.  The performance benefit here easily outweighs the fewer options I had in TT placement. 

When I set up a system, placement of the TT comes first, then preamp or phono to accommodate the tonearm cable length.  The rest of the system layout is easy because of the availability of IC's and PC's with varying lengths.

To my way of thinking, that is essentially what happens when not using a continuous run to preamp tonearm wire.

Makes no sense per my above statements as tonearm cables are not only available at 1m lengths.

czarivey
5,946 posts
 

I do prefer headshell for ease of service instead of just bending underneath tonearm or hassle removing it in certain cases to properly mount cartridge.

Besides, I have a super-luxury swapping headshells with different cartridges at any time I want. I'm Thorens lover and enthusiast so I have 4 Thorens headshells with different cartridges and 2 Thorens decks TD-125 and TD-160 as a back-up or secondary analogue turntable. 

Planning to sell little TD160 and get TD-124 for further Thorensation!

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