Soundsmith cartridges

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? 

Hopefully there is a way to upgrade the latest Mk2 ES to the new MR version.  Haven't seen any reviews on the new MR though.

@lewm 

I just asked Peter that question and he responded yesterday, on a Holiday no less. He does make a Current Mode version of the Hyperion but he prefers the Voltage Mode version. When I had the Voice I was using an AR phono stage. My Seta L Plus has both TI and Voltage operation, switchable on the front panel. The loading switches for Voltage Mode are on the back panel. 

@rdk777 

You sure can. The coils and magnets are identical. A rebuild replaces everything that moves. I do not think there will be much of a change. The Hyperion already has an excellent stylus. The micro ridge stylus might track very high frequencies better, but we can't hear that high.