Cartridges better than Colibri XGP?

Dear Audiofeil: I never had problems like the ones you posted.

Due to that I have mounted so many tonearms/cartridges in my TT's time to time I " suffer " " bent cantilever accidents ", well four times with my Colibri and in each one the Van den HUl service was first rate, but this is my experience aand different from yours and maybe different from other people.

I agree with you the Colibri is one of the best LOMC cartridges out there, carefully tonearm match is very important here, at least with my very low weight ( 2.5grs. ) and low output ( 0.22mv ) sample.

regards and enjoy the music,
Raul.

Raul, please note it was a Condor not a Colibri that was defective but that's not the case.

Furthermore, I'm not faulting vdH. It was the distributor, Bluebird that was the problem.

They are so bad the US agent dropped them as well.

IMO, there are so many structural variants of the "Colibri", as partially outlined by Mike Lavigne, that I don't know how any one person could say he knew the sound exactly. Not only do the materials vary but also the output voltage seems to vary from low, like Raul's, to high, like mine (1.0mV). Yet, there does seem to be remarkable agreement on the qualities, both good and evil. I am finding mine to be much more good than evil, in a Triplanar. Mike, maybe an "XGP" has gold windings, polycarbonate body.

The X stand for cross shaped coils(standard as far as i know ) , the second letter stands for the coil material and the third for the bodymaterial.
XGP would be X coils , gold coil windings , plastic body.

everything can be found on the vd hul site /cartridges .

www.vandenhul.com /cartridges

Any body has any recommendations as to what is the most dynamic /revealing colibri type?

of the Colibri's i've owned; the most 'explosive' is the copper windings/polycarbonite body XCP (i've owned 4 of those--2 series 1 and 2 series 2), the most detailed is neck and neck between the XCP and the XPP, which is platinum windings and polycarbonite body.

the A90 approaches very closely to the explosiveness of the XCP; i think it's because the A90 is the only other cartridge with such a minimalist body. nothing to slow down that energy.

if you are going to own a Colibri, get over being concerned with a cantiliver being aligned to the body of the cartridge, it will only happen by accident. which is not problem, just align the cantiliver and ignore the body. and if your arm does not naturally handle resonance easily you will be fighting edgyness. the Colibri is a truth machine; not glossing over arm shortcomings.