Killing sibilance distortion - VPI & Jubilee

Just to clarify Audiofeil's post about my post:

A. He's a dealer with a financial interest. Nothing wrong with that, but he should include a disclaimer when posting opinions about the superiority of his products vs. those of competitors.

B. There may be 2 (or 1, or 50, or 0) clearer and less congested cartridges. I can only speak about the ones I've heard, obviously. If the UNIverse is only #3, maybe I should move up. Are #1 or #2 available for < $4K?

Axel,

ZYX does use a micro-ridge stylus, and its ridges have the smallest contact radii of any stylus I know. (Audiofeil, please correct me if I'm wrong!) IMO this is a direct reason for its ability to trace smaller groove modulations.

If a stylus is physically larger than the curve it's trying to follow, it will contact only the two tops and never reach the bottom - producing a sort of clipping distortion. The finer the stylus, the higher the frequency it can trace accurately.

The finest styli of all are the cutting styli that make records in the first place. In theory we should be using them for playback too, though I wouldn't bet much on the lifespan of our records if we tried. ;-)

ZYX quotes seperate figures for lateral (15cu) and vertical (12cu) compliance. Whether those are at 100Hz or 10Hz I've never seen in any literature, but I understand what you're saying. (Of course for tracking sibilants, the compliance at 10kHz would be even more interesting!)

Just to clarify Doug Deacon's post.

I never claimed the other cartridges mentioned were in my line. I don't sell the Universe either.

I know that, relatively speaking, Doug has much less analog experience than many of us, hence some of the resentment in the posts. This is understandable and easily chalked up to youthful enthusiasm.

Dealer disclaimer
LOL

You guys are killing me with YOUR non-distorted sibilants --- like Daffy Duck :-)

Bill,

If those other carts aren't in your line then why not share your experience for the OP's benefit? Surely you must have learned something useful in all those centuries...

Thanks for the youth compliment by the way.
Boomer disclaimer

Hey guys,

I just wanted to give a quick update... as is visible from my "zenith" picture above, azimuth was off a bit. I fixed that last night, but I haven't listened yet. I'm going to recheck alignment also one more time on the MINT and then check to see if the sibilance distortion has improved at all. The cartridge is a hair too far to the right from being parallel in the headshell. If no improvements are made with this, the next step is to try the VPI jig, and following that, the benz cart. I'll keep the thread updated as I go.

I'll pull another recording with the benz cart, so at a minimum we'll all have an objective comparison between the 2 carts.

Dcstep - Yes, I have listened to this song in a digital format. There is no sibilance distortion on the digital recording. I will post a clip from the digital recording for comparison sake, and it does not take golden ears to hear the difference. Thanks for the contribution, however it is definitely not my vinyl setup being "clearer" with this, it is a problem that needs to somehow be fixed.

Bill - LOL love the humor. thanks for chiming in, and for the ideas exchanged via email some time ago. As you can see, I'm still trying to nail this one down. ;)