Soundsmith "The Voice"?

Hi again,

We played the cartridge in out room at RMAF, and I thought it was a stellar performer, especially at the price point. It was a medium compliance version, and it had the speed of a fine moving coil with a tonal balance that was very natural. It is quite amazing for a moving iron cartridge. I like it a lot.

I recently purchased a Voice cartridge. Have about 30 hours on it. My music is exclusively classical with an emphasis on voices and early music on original instruments. I have been collecting for 50 years and some of my Lp's are that old. I've never gone onto the crazy priced cartridges but I do have a good analog system with a Set amp. The Voice is, without doubt the finest sounding cartridge I've ever owned. I've discovered subtle sounds that I ever knew existed. A real winner. Mounted on a SME V tone arm A little tricky to set up but Peter of Soundsmith was most helpful.

Dear Caspermao: I have the opportunity to heard/test that cartridge in my system.

No I don't buy it it comes from a friend that want to compare it against the B&O MMC2 ( where those Sounsmith cartridges suppose to comes. ) that I own. We dont' have a very long listening due that we " play " with different tonearms and in different TTs.

A long short history: it is a very good performer I can say a top performer. I don't have any trouble with it regarding tracking at 1gr., I loaded at 100K ( due that my other MM type cartridges are loaded at that impedadnce ) to make the comparison and I mounted on medium and high mass tonearms with out trouble as my B&O one.

Certainly very good contender against the top LOMC cartridges. If you can please take a look about here:
http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?eanlg&1200430667

Fortunately for all of us today there are a " low " price cartridges ( MM type ) qith top performance and the Sounsmith is one of those examples along Nagaoka-Ortofon-Grado-Clearaudio-etc-etc.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Maybe the new Well Tempered Amadeus golf-ball tonearm is the perfect fit? If we add the new Vandersteen 7, Magico M5, Martin Logan CLX, etc, these are good times for high-end audio, recession, MP3, downloading and all!

Starer, would you care to tell us what other cartridges you have used in your present system, so we know what you are comparing to the Voice? Thanks. I'm interested too.