Should I buy a VDH Colibri or Black Beauty?

In my similar inquiry a few months ago, I found that many of the guys who post here and who have the most experience with a wide variety of high end cartridges were in awe of the Colibri, but all said that it was a cartridge that will reveal the "truth", good or bad, of the quality of the recording. The essence of their collective opinions was that if the LP is well recorded, the Colibri will give a uniquely thrilling experience. I bought a used one but have not had a chance to listen yet. However, I am rather surprised that so far none of the Colibri admirers have responded to your question. I have no feel for the sound of the Black Beauty, sorry to say.

I meant to add that if you are looking at a used Colibri, especially one that has recently been "readjusted" by van den Hul, then any fears of manufacturing defects should be ameliorated. Someone else has done the beta testing for you. Therefore the putative problems cited by Audiofeil and Fmpmd, whether they were the fault of the distributor or of van den Hul, would not apply.

Dear Lutenist: I have a little different experiences with Van denHul cartridges. These kind of inconsistencies talk very bad of this cartridge manufacturer.

I ownowned: a Grasshopper III, BB, Frog and Colibri, I have to say that I don't have any trouble with any one of these cartridges and IMHO the Colibri ( low output version: 0.25mv. ) is the best quality performer.

Van denHul has different versions in the same model due to differnt output level, coil build materials, body build material, etc, etc and the different cartridges in the same model catalog performs a little different too.

My experiences with the Van den Hu cartridges and especially with the Colibri tell me that has long breaking time ( over 100 hours. ) and a little " hard " to set-up: tiny changes make a difference on uts quality performance. Normally the Colibri after 300 hours you can send to Van den Hul to a " last " fine tunning with out charge and I can say that when the cartridge return is a winner at the top cartridge level.

Regards and enjoy the music,
Raul.

I'm a little concerned that the Colibri only sounds good with excellent recordings. Many of my records are not, but the music still shines through. I don't want something that makes more of the faults than the beauty of the music.

I guess after all is said and done, all I can do is decide by listening myself and making my own mind up.

Thanks for your interest, people, more contributions very welcome - any other suggestions?

Lutenist and Lewm,

Lewm, I too am a bit disappointed when someone doesn't respond to the original poster's actual question and certainly that wasn't my intention. Let me explain a few things further and maybe this will help Lutenist.

First, I am that dreaded life form, a reviewer, so I choose, for reasons that aren't important here, not to list my system on Audiogon. That said, I had my BB mounted a VPI TNT V with a JMW 12 arm at that time. The BB was, as has been pointed out, an overall fine performer. On that table, it had great speed and resolution and yet was still balanced with excellent midrange and bass extension.

My first Colibri was mounted on my current SME 30 (with an SME IV.vi arm) and the table is on the massive and overbuilt Silent Running Audio CRAZ Rack which sits on a concrete slab (I mention this for the tracking description below). I've set up many cartridges and I set this one up using a full compliment of Wally tools custom made for the arm and using his Analog Shop. On certain LPs the Colibri was breathtaking. I doubt you'll find a faster cartridge on the planet. Yet as good as it was at times, it also diappointed even more because it was sibilant on many LPs and a HORRIBLE tracker! Since VDH's usually track at very low VTF's I tried every adjustment I could all to no avail.

I sent it back to the distributor who claimed it was defective and he allegedly sent me a new one. Same result. Then, I tried another one and this one was the same.

You can blame it my table or my set-up, but you you'd be hard pressed to explain why I haven't had any tracking or sibilance problems with any other cartridges - and this includes a Grasshopper, a Lyra Titan and my current Dynavector XV-1s.

Sure, I have no doubt that others have had no problems with a Colbri due to the differences Raul points out. However, if I am about to spend that much money on a cartridge, I'd hope others who have had issues or encountered tracking or sibilance problems would at least let me know. Then, I can make my own decision based on all of the information gathered and the apparent credibility of the sources.

Finally, I WISH I didn't have this bad experience with the VDH Colibri as I liked the Grasshopper and BB so much when I had them. Unfortunately, I either had horrible luck with my 3 Colibris or it is just a very finicky performer.