maybe damage is not the proper term.... will you accept prematurely wear as an acceptable alternative?
Mono Cartridge Question
You chaps have watched me struggle with the issue of my London Decca Reference being irreplaceable, and then joyfully learning that John Wright has a successor after all. You have seen me buy and test three other MI designs (Nagaoka MP-500, Grado Statement3, Soundsmith Sussurro MkII) along with my older MC cartridges (Ortofon Kontrapunkt C and Benz Micro Ruby 3). Since those struggles have led me to owning two SME turntables and four tonearms, I am now torturing myself with the question of whether one of those four should be home to a dedicated mono cartridge. Remember, I only have one ear and cannot hear stereo at the best of times. A mono cartridge for my few dozen mono recordings would be a matter of reduced surface noise and possibly some improvement in dynamics.
I can get hold of an Ortofon Cadenza Mono (two voice coils so not true mono) for about 1600CDN, and a Miyajima Zero for 3450CDN. So the question is this: am I mad to even think about it? Money is not what it once was before I retired. There is no opportunity to go and hear these before purchase, without spending much more than purchase price on travel.
Shall I "make do" with my rather good stereo carts for my mono LPs or is there something better waiting for me when I get out those Parlophone Beatles LPs?
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- 80 posts total
@wallytools You wrote "I think a conical stylus is simply not appropriate for playing back ANY groove cut by a cutting stylus made in the last 75 years (and perhaps more). If the playback stylus is not a facsimile of the cutting stylus - or if it is misaligned - it will NOT take the same path through the groove as the path used to cut the groove in the first place. This is NOT to say a conical stylus won’t sound good! I am only saying you are giving up information in the groove and adding distortion (including, but not limited to, some second order harmonic which could be pleasing, but certainly not accurate.)" What do you think then of the DaVa field coil cartridge that features a conical stylus? Many, including the few on this forum who don't trash a cartridge they have never heard, claim that the DaVa is one of the worlds' best. Do you think these claims are simply emanating from a love of colouration and that the DaVa cannot by your definition be anywhere near a great cartridge? |
@intactaudio Saying that a conical stylus causes premature wear isn’t an outrages claim but I have no idea about what the groove would look like before and after. This is the first time I’ve heard anyone say as such and while it’s a perfectly plausible statement, is it something to fret over?
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To be clear, JR posted about the added vertical movement from a conical in a high frequency purely lateral groove. I added that in the case of a cartridge with minimal / no vertical compliance this can be a very bad combination. If this were a situation where the cartridge tracked at 1.5g I wouldn't be as concerned as one that tracks at 4g. dave |
@goofyfoot, this induced errant vertical excursion can be easily calculated mathematically if you are comfortable with numbers. A conical stylus (and, to a lesser degree an elliptical stylus) will exhibit this induced errant vertical excursion to make its way through the groove to greater and lesser degrees depending upon record velocity, frequency and playing radius. This "pinch effect" has been known for decades and has been written about in the scientific journals in the 50s and 60s. What few cartridge designers fully appreciate is that the perturbations in the groove that ultimately result in an audible signal can be measured CONSERVATIVELY in the low triple digit nanometer range. The stylus in the animation I shared above has this errant vertical excursion in the single digit micron range. The high frequency portion of a frequency sweep on a test record has a horizontal perturbation around 3 microns. That's all! I have analyzed hundreds of cartridges by nearly 50 manufacturers and can attest that there are VERY few cartridge designers who fully understand the microscopic world their products are meant to navigate. Fewer still who understand why a high fidelity mechanical transcription requires the playback contact points to be not only a genuine facsimile of the cutting contact points but their angles must agree with each other NET of lacquer spring back. |
- 80 posts total