Should I buy a VDH Colibri or Black Beauty?

What is "effective mass"? I use an Adanalog Airbearing arm, the sliding armtube is described as being 25g without weight or cartridge. Would that be a match for the Colibri? (I am particularly interested in this cart in particular owing to an extremely keenly priced example being available. I must say, though, I'm worried by the bad reports it seems to be attracting.

Any more comments on the BB?

Let me post my two cents...

I have experience with many of today's finest cartridges...

Dynavector XV-1s
Lyra Titan I
Air Tight PC-1
Benz Ruby 3
ZYX Universe
Koetsu Onyx Sig
Shelter 90x
VDH Colibri

This list is not for bragging rights. I am only trying to convey my experience. I have owned all of these and have bought and sold many of them on this site. I have had some twice and 3 times. Along with other lower end models in the 2000 dollar range. such as the Frogs, Rosewoods, helicons, airy, ah hell Ive bought everything I could get my hands on at one time or another. If the price is right and I can resell it if its not my cup of tea without loosing money, why not?

I find the Colibri to be with out a doubt one of the finest cartridges available today. I also find VDH to offer the best customer support by charging very little to maintenance your cartridge. Whether its a tune up or a complete rebuild, AJ is the most reasonable manufacture in the business.

Now all that being said, I can not recommend the Colibri for a one and only cartridge. This cartridge is not the same as say a Dynavector XV-1s or a ZYX Universe. Those cartridges I can recommend absolutely to someone who is looking for one cartridge only, a well rounded top of the line cartridge. I can also recommend Universe and XV-1s to a novice who has the money and simply wants one of the best. Cartridges like the PC-1, XV-1s, and Universe are user, recording, and equipment friendly. They are well rounded performers and its really tough to make them sound bad. They might not be sounding their best, it does take experience to get the most out of any cartridge. But most will be happy with them even if not set up properly.

The Colibri is for the connoisseur. He is so involved in analog and his system that, 1) he wants to hears everything, {to make sure he isn’t missing something} 2) He already owns a few very good cartridges 3) He probably has more than one tone arm mounted on his table. {because he already realized that tone arms are just as important as the cartridge and the matching or mating of the two is a ceremony in itself.}

What the Colibri offers is......(drum roll)....something completely different from the herd. The Colibri is so fast, so neutral, so extended it is in a league of its own. It has tremendous separation. It never gets homogenized. It never breaks up or falls apart, it will consume anything you throw at it. It does not sound like analog or digital, its something in between or to the left or right. I cant put my finger on it. It presents the music like no other device in audio does. Its clear, without any grain, its high’s are so surreal and elegant, it has enormous air as if it creates an entire atmosphere around the instruments and voices. And its color? It is the most colorful presenter. Meaning it sheds no shade or hue of its own. I can visualize a color or shade with other cartridges where all the different colors in a recording are slightly affected by it. The colibri has its own presentation but it doesn’t have to do with color. It has more to do with speed, thickness, density, air, space and such. This allows for the color and texture of instruments and voices to shine through…. Its really hard to describe.

When I first listened to a colibri, I was like, what the f-ck is this? At first I sat there with my mouth open....as I continued to try different recordings I was like, I don’t think I like this. Where’s the bloom? Where’s the warmth? Where are the thick solid images? Where’s that mid bass analog bump and jump? Where’s the beeeeeeeef! I ended up taking it out and left it off to the side for a few months. As I continued with my analog journey, trying different tone arms, phono stages, cartridges, turntables, phono cables, I just left the colibri in its box. One day I pulled it out again to listen to it, right before I send it to VDH to see what the hell is wrong with it? This time, I was absolutely amazed by it, as if my ears were more trained, that I could now appreciate the Colibri. Its like a thing that requires developing a taste for, like fine cheese, Beer and Wine.

To try and end this, since I am dragging on a bit and making very little sense, I would have to say that I recommend the Colibri for your second cartridge. Meaning if you already own one of the other top of the line cartridges in the world and you want to own another one, you must buy a Colibri. The Colibri is another view, something different from the rest, a different take. And yes it can be brutal on lesser material, painstakingly revealing of mediocre recordings. The colibri can be unlistenable with recordings that sound ok or even nice with the other cartridges mentioned. The Colibri can also take a recording that is not believable with the other cartridges and make it believable. It can make sense of recording that didnt make sense before. And it also can take a recording that was a bit boring with the other cartridges mentioned, and turn it into something so exciting, that the hair on the back of your neck stands up and your stomach and chest swell with blood.

Cheers
Rudy

Also that talk about miss-tracking and quality control with VDH, I have never experienced. I have had two Colibri’s and both were the finest trackers. More quiet in the grooves then all the rest. And by a large margin.

Lutenist, The tonearm "effective mass" is a mathematical entity that describes the average of the mass in relation to the square of its distance from the stylus tip. (I am writing this without access to the actual formula, so I may be leaving out some parameter.) In other words, if you put a weight right on top of the headshell, pretty much that weight will add arithmetically to the effective mass. On the other hand, if you put a weight back at the pivot point, the change in effective mass will be reduced by a quantity related to the square of the length of your tonearm from pivot to stylus. Ask the maker of your tonearm for its effective mass spec. Especially for an air bearing tonearm, the effective mass will be very different for the vertical and lateral planes. Mostly, you want to worry about the effective mass in the vertical plane as regards cartridge matching. If I have misspoken here in any important way, please anyone do not hesitate to correct me, but I think this is correct.

I will add my very small head to head comparison in a friends system, (I have MM at the moment) the system is very well set up and extremely transparent, needless to say he has several arms and cartridges, we listened for a long while the XV-1 and it was wonderful, I noticed he had the Colibri in another arm and asked him to play that one...
We played the same Ellis Regina record and it was completely out of this world, we had just played that record on the XV-1 and it seemed like the musicians have moved from the next room into ours! amazing!
Then we played another record we used as a reference in several occasions and that sounds wonderful with the XV-1, it was absolutely horrible with the Colibri, everything was out of place, I cant explain it.

So I would agree with Rudolffzigray, he couldnt have explained it better.

Lewm, here's hoping you have great luck with your Colibri. I agree that my tonearm's effective mass may have contributed to the sibilance but was not the root cause. I tried adjusting everything with it, VTF, VTA, antiskate, damping, loading, you name it. When it was tracking well, it sounded exactly like Rudy and others have described it - amazing, breathtaking, incredible etc. Like Rudy and Jsadurni point out though, I wouldn't want it for my only cartridge as my XV-1s gives me more overall good sound on many more LPs.

Unfortunately, I guess I must NOT be a "connoisseur" as I do not have the ability to mount more than one tonearm on my SME 30. I'd love to have the ability to have say a TW Acustic with three tonearms or, better yet, a Rockport Sirius V. However, with the economy the way it is and my 410(k) now reduced to a 101(k), I'm lucky I don't have a Mattell "Close & Play" (crap, I think I just dated myself)!