As I said in my post, I welcome the opinions of those who have had direct experience with the Mod Squad. I am simply commenting on the general trend in these posts for people to make broad ranging comments based on little, if any actual experience with a product. For those who this is not applicable to, feel free to comment but a comment with some "meat" more welcome. Simply saying that a product is bad is of no use at all. Do you think it is a compatibility issue? Do you think it is a sound quality issue? etc. I would also say that the personal attacks on my character are not welcome. I never attacked any individual in my postings. I simply commented on the general flavour of some of the postings.
Now on to specifics. The Zu has an output of 0.3mV. The cartridges that we have largely been discussing (the Koetsu Urushi and the Dynavector XV1s) have this much or more output. The only cartridges that I mentioned that have less are the Vermillion at 0.2 and the Kaitora at 0.26. So at least half the cartridges are of greater output so gain should not be an issue with them. For the other two, I again reiterate that a compatibility issues is very different than a quality issue. I have also clearly said that I agree that overall gain might be an issue with the lowest output cartridges. I doubt anyone is implying that phono stage quality can be simply gauged by overall gain, so perhaps we can stop dismissing the phono stage simply as having too little gain.
I would suggest that $4000 on a cartridge rarely makes any sense. This is not however what we are really discussing here. I have said that I am looking at a variety of cartridges at demo, used and closeout prices. This makes the cartridges much closer to $2000-2500. I don't agree that in such a price context, the cartridges that I have mentioned are out of line for the system that I have.
I would also argue that the typical idea of the turntable being the most important piece followed by the arm and then the cartridge is flawed logic. If you subscribe to the Linn school of thought that "Garbage in, equals garbage out", the logical extension is that the most important piece is the cartridge. It has the most difficult job in many ways as the only piece that has to actually change physical energy (groove modulations) into electrical energy. The other parts of the system can only serve to mess up the info retrieved by the cartridge. So I would say put the cartridge first and then allocate less to the rest of the chain (at least until you get to the speakers which have the next most difficult job, transferring electrical energy to physical energy).
Now on to specifics. The Zu has an output of 0.3mV. The cartridges that we have largely been discussing (the Koetsu Urushi and the Dynavector XV1s) have this much or more output. The only cartridges that I mentioned that have less are the Vermillion at 0.2 and the Kaitora at 0.26. So at least half the cartridges are of greater output so gain should not be an issue with them. For the other two, I again reiterate that a compatibility issues is very different than a quality issue. I have also clearly said that I agree that overall gain might be an issue with the lowest output cartridges. I doubt anyone is implying that phono stage quality can be simply gauged by overall gain, so perhaps we can stop dismissing the phono stage simply as having too little gain.
I would suggest that $4000 on a cartridge rarely makes any sense. This is not however what we are really discussing here. I have said that I am looking at a variety of cartridges at demo, used and closeout prices. This makes the cartridges much closer to $2000-2500. I don't agree that in such a price context, the cartridges that I have mentioned are out of line for the system that I have.
I would also argue that the typical idea of the turntable being the most important piece followed by the arm and then the cartridge is flawed logic. If you subscribe to the Linn school of thought that "Garbage in, equals garbage out", the logical extension is that the most important piece is the cartridge. It has the most difficult job in many ways as the only piece that has to actually change physical energy (groove modulations) into electrical energy. The other parts of the system can only serve to mess up the info retrieved by the cartridge. So I would say put the cartridge first and then allocate less to the rest of the chain (at least until you get to the speakers which have the next most difficult job, transferring electrical energy to physical energy).
