@lewm True, but have you tried to buy capacitors in Farads lately?
The Shure V15 V with a Jico SAS/B stylus VS The Soundsmith Hyperion MR and Lyra Atlas SL
On a sentimental lark I purchased two Shure V15 V bodies and one SAS/B stylus. I was always a realistic about the Shure's potential. Was comparing it to $10k+ cartridges fair? Absolutely. The Shure was considered to be one of the best cartridges of the day. Why not compare it to a few of the best we have today?
The Shure has always been considered to be unfailingly neutral. Famous recording engineers have said it sounded most like their master tapes. I do not have an original stylus for the Shure and I can not say that the Jico performs as well.
My initial evaluation was quite positive. It worked wonderfully well in the Shroder CB. With a light mounting plate and small counterbalance weight a resonance point of 8 hz was easily achieved. There was nothing blatantly wrong with the sound. There was no mistracking at 1.2 grams. You can see pictures of all these styluses here https://imgur.com/gallery/stylus-photomicrographs-51n5VF9
After listening to a bunch of favorite evaluation records my impression was that the Shure sounded on the thin side, lacking in the utmost dynamic impact with just a touch of harshness. I listened to the Shure only for four weeks as my MC phono stage had taken a trip back to the factory. I was using the MM phono stage in the DEQX Pre 8, designed by Dynavector. I have used it with a step up transformer and know it performs well. I got my MC stage back last week and cycled through my other cartridges then back to the Shure. The Soundsmith and Lyra are much more alike than different. I could easily not be able to tell which one was playing. The Lyra is the slightest touch darker. The Shure is a great value....for $480 in today's money, but it can not hold a candle to the other cartridges. They are more dynamic, smoother and quieter. They are more like my high resolution digital files. Whether or not they are $10,000 better is a personal issue. Did the DEQX's phono stage contribute to this lopsided result? Only to a small degree if any. I do have two Shure bodies and they both sound exactly the same. The Shure may have done better with a stock stylus. I do not think the age of the bodies contributes to this result at all.
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@lewm Just one other deviation. The DC resistance across the primary of your bass transformer is almost 4 ohms, something like 3.7 ohms. I can't remember the exact figure. |
Perhaps the primary of the OEM bass transformer has a DCR of 4 ohms. So what? There is probably a lot of wire in the primary to deal with the power requirements at low frequencies. That is what the DCR tells you. By the estimation of others, it has a turns ratio of 1:250 or thereabouts. (Sound Lab is secretive about the actual value, unless Dr West has confided in you.) The turns ratio is what counts. The impedance of my 845PX as seen by an amplifier is around 100 ohms at 20Hz and around 50 ohms at 100 Hz, as previously mentioned. This is measured directly driving the bass transformer with no crossover.
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Slight correction: The impedance data I quoted were for driving the bass transformer in parallel with the full range transformer I described elsewhere, which has a turns ratio of 1:90. Not that it matters very much. I measured both with and without the full range transformer connected and got about the same numbers. |
@mijostyn If you use that formula using 1,000,000 instead of 1, you input R in Ohms, C in uF and the frequency is in Hz; IOW 1,000,000/RxCx2Pi You're using a digital crossover for the amps so you don't really need to passively roll them off, right? You might be able to boost the high frequency (+14KHz) output by using a small coupling cap to bypass the transformer. It has inter-winding capacitance anyway which is usually swamped out by loading the secondary. |
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