Benz LP Ebony, and S-Class Ebony

I was getting some signals that the new S line of Benz headed things in the direction of "brightness", "presence" "resolution" and all those words that mean "away" from musicality and harmonics and tone. Any firsthand knowledge? It's difficult to be totally objective after committing to a large purchase. I just worry sometimes that buyers "make" the new sound what they think they want it to be after spending all that money.

Hi Stringreen,

These cartridges are sensitive to .02-.03 grams tracking force changes. Yes, that's not a typo. You should be able to find a few digital gauges in that $100 price range that will give you .01 g accuracy.

You'll find quite a few comments by Doug Deacon and myself on this topic - that you want to be on the threshold of mistracking. Once you get more than say, .05 to .10 grams above this threshold, the dynamics tend to become compressed. I wonder how many wonderful cartridges have been misjudged because of lack of attention to this?

Also, my experiments with arc-style protractors (see my forum - in the Setup and Tweaks section) along with the several active threads on the topic on this forum for a lively discussion. Using an arc-style protractor has been a revelation to me.

One of the side benefits of this more accurate alignment (arc protractor) is that VTA becomes less twitchy. Amen to that!

Mintlp is (according to reliable reports) producing reasonably priced (for one-off work) arc-style protractors and delivering them in2-3 weeks. You can read about all of the details in the above referenced threads.

Enjoy!
Thom @ Galibier

Thanks for the information Thom..I feel a digital scale for me does not make sense. I suspect that cartridges have their individual "perfect" vtf. Once found, there is no need to recalibrate. The Shure scale brings you in the ballpark, but one must use his/her ears and adjust carefully, adding and removing weight until that magic vtf is found. It isn't necessary that I know my cartridge's magic force, because the next cartridge off of the assembly line will have a different one. Although I would like to definitively say that my LP needs 1.865 grams for Nirvana, another's will need heavier or lighter vtf

I have spoken to Garth at Musical Surroundings about the Ebony LP vs. the Ebony LP-S. And I have carefully compared the specs and physical appearance. The ONLY difference is the use of brass for the structural frame, vs. aluminum. And the only significance to that is the cartridge's mass. There is some hype that brass's greater mass may provide more damping. But the really IMPORTANT thing for any potential buyer to think about is his arm's recommended cartridge mass to keep resonance within the right frequency range. The arm's effective mass, the cartridge's compliance, and the added mass of each cartridge will determine his cartridge/arm system's resonance frequency.

With the vast majority of tonearms designed for a moving coil cartridge, the new LP-S is too heavy. So, with an LP-S the resonance frequency will go up into the audible frequency range, above 20 Hz. And this will definitely have an audible effect upon sound.

Sorry, my last sentence was backwards. So let me correct that last paragraph:

With the vast majority of tonearms designed for a moving coil cartridge, the mass of the older Ebony LP is just right for proper resonance. The new LP-S is too heavy. So it will make the resonance frequency go down into the dangerous zone of record warps, thus potential slow and methodical damage to the cantilever, to the records themselves, and to the speakers' woofers. Plus amplifiers can clip because so much power is used to reproduce the VERY low frequncies of record warps.

If someone happens to have a very light tonearm, originally designed for MM cartridges, then most MC cartridges cause the resonance frequency to be above 20 Hz. For these low effective-mass tonearms, The heavier LP-S might just add enough mass to bring the resonance down out of the audible frequency range.