Soundsmith cartridges

I loved the Soundsmith Voice which is also making a friend very happy. I gave it to him for his 70th birthday. I am just shy of jumping for the Hyperion MR myself. I have an email out to Peter Ledermann asking how he thinks it will perform with a current mode phono stage, the Channel D Seta L Plus. At 10 ohms it might make it, but it is close. 

I have Auditioned the regular Hyperion at Soundmith's music room using my own records and could not come close to making it miss track. It smoothly handled passages that can come across sibilant with many cartridges. Knowing the Voice really well the only question mark is how well it does the 3rd dimension and I won't know that until I play it on my system. The Voice was mid pack in that regard. The best in my system has been the Lyra Atlas SL followed by the MC Diamond. Both are expensive to rebuild. The beauty of the Soundsmith cartridges is that the rebuild cost is very low in comparison. 

I'm not sure the upgrades to the Hyperion MR will make much of a difference. Soundsmith was already using an excellent stylus and the lower moving mass might improve tracking, but the Hyperion's tracking abilities were already excellent. It will handle groove velocities higher than any cartridge currently made. 

I might also add that dealing with Soundsmith has always been a pleasure and Peter goes out of his way to make sure you are happy. 

Mike, have you been using the Voice in current mode? Otherwise I’d think the inductance of the Hyperion might present a problem in current mode. DCR may be 10 ohms, but its inductance causes AC resistance or impedance to rise with frequency, which is why they recommend a 470 ohm load, minimum. So current output goes down as frequency goes up.

I’ve never been a fan of MC cartridges after owning many and prefer Soundsmith or Grado on my turntables. As mentioned above, Soundsmith offers the best value of any cartridge manufacturer due to its very generous rebuild policy.

Those that use Wally Tools and view their informative videos know that stylus mounting in cantilever errors (zenith) are fairly substantial in many cartridges with no correlation to price and with 14 degrees being the highest they measured. In fact, some of the worst errors have been with the most expensive cartridges tested. In general, they have stated that the best results have been with Soundsmith and Ortofon cartridges, a compelling reason to go with these brands if you aren’t willing to spend the $800 or so to send your cartridge to Wally Tools for measurement of zenith error so you can correct for it when mounting the cartridge with their zenith tool (included with the first cartridge you have measured).

I had Wally Tools evaluate my Soundsmith Sussurro MkII Gold cartridge. They found a 4.49 degree error, about twice the average and just under the maximum of 5 degrees that most tonearms will allow for correction. So much for generalizations and disappointing since Peter Lidermann hand built this expensive cartridge and must have noticed this error prior to shipping..

I’ve attached an informative video.

Stylus Zenith Error - What is it? Why is it a problem? How common is it?

Zenith error is a huge issue because most don’t know their cartridge has it, how much of it, and the capacity to correct for it.  Not many will send every cartridge to Wally. A 2 degree error will destroy alignment accuracy if ignored.

@vinylvalet,

Are you going to contact Peter to see what he says about your cartridge?