Mono Cartridge Question

For those of challenged imagination, look at it this way: a groove wall with lateral deviations will push back against the stylus (yes, that's Newton's first law). The shape of the stylus will affect the direction of force exerted on the stylus, which just a little painless thought about vectors will make obvious. Image pushing your finger in a horizontal direction against a plane inclined at 45° to the vertical. Your force will be equally divided into a lateral and a vertical component, and the inclined plane will move not horizontally, but in a direction 45° above the horizontal. Those vectors will mean that a rounded stylus profile will experience not only lateral pushback, but also some in a vertical direction. That will tend to make the stylus go up and down, just like the chatter on a machine tool. A stylus with a side profile that is more vertical, will experience that force more in the lateral plane and less in the vertical.

None of this will matter more than it does with a stereo record and a stereo cartridge, as long as the mono cartridge has vertical compliance. If you have a mono cartridge that has no vertical compliance, all that vertical force has no suspension to damp it: it must make the whole stylus/cantilever/cartridge move up and down with the resulting hammering in the groove. This seems rather elementary.

Now you might argue this - but what does vertical chatter matter if the groove only contains lateral information? Sure, we can go there. Conical styli used to play mono records for many years in the days when mono cartridges never dreamed of having vertical compliance. Did those records suffer more damage than a mono disc with a non-vertically compliant cartridge? Than a similar cartridge with an elliptical profiled stylus? Or a stereo record with a stereo pickup? I don't know, but I can see the theoretical argument for why this should be so.

This does make me feel more likely to settle on a cartridge that is an adapted stereo design, with its guts rotated 45° and with a modern profiled stylus. That way I'll do no harm if I accidentally put a stereo record under that pickup, and I know I'm theoretically less likely to damage my original mono Parlophone Beatles.

@wallytools Yes, I understand the theoretical principles involved. The size of the stylus is a factor here too. A larger stylus being exponentially more detrimental than a smaller stylus. My stylus is a 0.65 conical and my arm is a 9 inch set for  Baerwald. I'm getting more noise with newer records than with my older records. For me, noise would be significant inside one groove and then it clears up for the remaining LP.

Hello @fortheloveof,

You asked, "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?"

For the record: I have not heard this cartridge, but would certainly like to. 

NO...I am not saying that people love this cartridge because of any colorations, whether such colorations are real or imagined.

What I am saying is that if ANY cartridge has a conical stylus, it CANNOT possibly extract everything there is to get from the groove. This is a metrological certainty that can be calculated and proven in at least four ways I can imagine (one mathematical, two by software and one by microscopy). 

So, if you think that this cartridge is great now...I can only imagine how great it would sound with a playback stylus that was a facsimile of the cutting stylus that was used to create the very groove is it was meant to transcribe (as long as that stylus has been properly aligned to do so, of course - just because you have a fine-line contact stylus doesn't mean you will realize its benefits without some work!)

Now, if someone - ANYONE - has heard two of the same cartridge design but one with a conical and one with a fine line stylus and claimed it sounds better with a conical than a fine line, I'd respond by saying all the variables in the test between the two iterations of the same cartridge have not been fully controlled for, making the experiment one with a negative value. Either that, OR, the listener values an extra bit of lush warmth (and not much more, at that, as the second/third harmonic content generated by conicals aren't very significant) OVER the improvements in focus, dynamics, high frequency extension, inner detail, imaging and soundstaging that a properly aligned fine line contact stylus offers.

I have no doubt it is a stellar cartridge and I want one, but I'll certainly take mine with a fine line contact edge, please!!! 😁

Hi @goofyfoot 

You said, 'The size of the stylus is a factor here too. A larger stylus being exponentially more detrimental than a smaller stylus"

I don't know why this might be the case, but I am not surprised if there is a good reason for it. We have spend little time studying conical stylus behavior, putting our efforts on fine-line profiles predominantly. The one thing I have found to be certain in the last three years of diving very deep into the relationship between the stylus and the groove is that the more I learn about it, the more I realize how much I don't know!  If you can please explain why this would be so to me, I'd be appreciative of it

To date, the only thing I see out of our research is that a larger conical stylus (vs. a smaller conical stylus) differs on where it will contact the groove wall. Larger conical styli track higher on the wall and smaller down further. This is why when some people change to a different cartridge and note how much quieter or louder the groove noise is, they mistakenly attribute the change to the cartridge being better or worse when it can more often be explained by the change in stylus geometry and the elevation of the contact point in the groove. If you've been causing damage to a groove wall and happened to have been using a large contact radius and then changed to a smaller contact radius you might experience a quieter listening experience. All you've done in such a case is ride below the previously made groove damage, so you're not hearing it any longer. This can happen when you realign a fine line contact stylus as well. When properly aligned, such styli will ride at their maximum elevation in the groove. 

@wallytools From my understanding and maybe I'm wrong but I have read this claim, that a larger stylus will still ride far down into the groove wall and the difference in distance between the larger and smaller conical stylus is very minimal. This is why I believe the larger stylus will create more damage, because it is in contact with a larger portion of the groove than a smaller stylus.