Excel makes sense, I too wish that we could know more as well. I don't trust anything on the Kiseki page as Mr. Van Dungen promoted the myth that the cartridges were the work of the fictional character Goro Focadu and that the diamonds were polished with human hair.
Installed A Kiseki Black Heart Today. Lovely Cartridge
Last year I sent off a Kiseki Black Heart to Allclear Audio for a new diamond. I checked it briefly when it returned, and set it aside. During the fall I also located a lovely first generation Sota Sapphire turntable. I also acquired a low mass version of the Audiomods Series Six tonearm for this table. I had a Sota Cosmos arm board that was cut for a SME arm, and was able to repurpose it for this installation. I put it all together and ran my Ortofon MC2000 on it.
This afternoon I thought it would be interesting to install the Black Heart. So I put it on and finished the alignment. These long body designs where the cantilever is hidden underneath the body are truly a pain to align, but it is amazing what you can do with an iPhone these days.
I finished the install and hooked the table back up to a Musical Fidelity NuVista Vinyl phono stage. The sound is warm, textured, layered, and utterly captivating. Allclear did a great job replacing the diamond as this cartridge is utterly silent in the groove. I am playing Seasons by Gabriel Lee at the moment and it sounds just lovely.
What amazes me is how a cartridge of this vintage sounds so fine. The Black Heart was released in the late 1980's and had a price tag of $2400 it seems. I did find a review in a print magazine an internet acquaintance sent me about an Absolute Sound review for the cartridge, and apparently the reviewer liked is better than the TOTL Lapis Lazuli, which sold for around $5000 at that time. I have no idea if that is true, as it seems so few of that cartridge were produced and are probably in the hands of the most ardent collectors now.
I like to believe cartridge technology marches on. With improved materials, more sophisticated engineering, and precision engineering techniques...well...today's cartridges should be better. But with listening to the Black Heart, some doubts can be raised. Now this is not a colorless and utterly transparent cartridge. The Black Heart seems to be shaded to the romantic side of music, but not in a way that gloms over the beauty of the music. In the past I had read where the goal of the original Kiseki was to out Koetsu Koetsu. You can see that play out I suppose.
All I know is that the Black Heart is a fine cartridge. It makes me wonder what the earlier Gold and Silverspot cartridges were like. Of course there are a few versions of the Purpleheart. But I wonder if any are worth seeking out, or if the Black Heart is innately superior to them.
All I can say is these cartridges are worth seeking out and refurbishing.
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@lewm So I installed the MC2000 on the table again this morning. Been listening for awhile. The cartridges are so fundamentally different that making a decision of which one is "better" is not really possible. The MC2000 is more in line presentation wise to my Verismo and Proteus, so having the boron version as my casual cartridge makes the most sense. The Blackheart is more aligned in presentation to the Audio Tekne MC6310 I have, and it makes for a nice change of pace. So perhaps I can rotate the cartridges when one needs to go out of service. The Audio Tekne is installed on the 12" Audiomods Series Six arm. For the moment I will put the Blackheart aside and keep it safe in its wood container. Rare enough to be treated gently and kept for a special day, and something to be cherished for a bit of audio history. |
The motor generator of most MC cartridges uses the same core classic design used by the first SPUs in the 1950s. There are some different motor designs out there (including by Ortofon), but mostly these are just different, rather than better. Of course implementation details and parts selections can drastically change the "voice" of the cartidge, but it’s far from a direct correlation between expensive / modern matrials and "better" sound quality. In fact, the past seems to have had access to some of the more exotic parts, such as beryllium cantilevers and boron pipe - which I guess went extinct when the R&D money for vinyl dried up. And SPUs still sound great today! And Koetsus (both vintage and modern), etc... No surprise at all that a well preserved vintage high-end MC can sound amazing!
Hard from me to tell from afar, from pics - but yeah, from what I've seen SS is an absolute NOPE for me when it comes time to service a Koetsu. Van den Hul too - seen some really wild Koetsu retips from there. |
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