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
Dear @au_lait : There are several reasons why your 66 is totally wrong to listen MUSIC and two of those reasons are that's a 12" EL design with a extremely high inertia moment and both of these reasons goes against quality room/system performance levels. I don't care what you want to make with your 66 at the end is what you like even that you as other 66 owners are wrong with.
R. |
I was asking @lewm specifically because he has an SP10 with a high mass plinth and a steel FR arm, similar to my set-up. Not really interested in debating how "wrong" my tone-arm is at this stage! But I appreciate your opinion of course. |
I prefer removable arm wands to head shells, (I own arms with both). Nothing against removable head shell, but removable arm wands simplify greatly cartridge setup. My ET2.5, all I need to do is set the tracking force. With my VPI JMW, all I have to do is check the tracking force. Both keep azimuth, zenith, and vta right where I left them. The Magnepan Unitrack 1 I have I need to set azimuth, vta and tracking weight. |
frogman - I indeed understood your comment to rewire the entire cable from clips to RCA's with the same wire as before but this time with no intermittent connections. We would suspect an "improvement" here. But hearing this would be tough to confirm as we are depending on aural memory from before the change that was hours or days ago. Only when two of the same tonearms, with removeable headshells, were installed on one TT, one with a DIN inserted and the other the wire with no breaks. The arms are setup for the one cartridge. Swapping the cartridge between the two arms would then possibly allow for quantifiable differences to be identied. My suspicions are that the differences would be minimal, very minimal. And then take the experiment one level further and drop in a tonearm cable like the Stealth or Transparent Opus, and put this on the arm with the DIN connection. Here, I suspect the difference could be significant. |
