Soundsmith Straingauge SG-200 cartridge system

Doug, I get the impression you don't think the Straingauge will be as 'fleshed out' as the Orpheus, and yet Arran states it isn't tonally thin in any way.

Arran didn't state that he's heard the Orpheus. There's no basis for comparing his comment to mine.

FWIW, I've set up and heard the Orpheus, the Ortofon A90, Dynavector XV-1S, ZYX UNIverse and Atmos, Benz LP, Lyra Olympos and other top LOMCs in my own system and in others. Any of them is more harmonically complete than the SG.

So is a low cost MM that Raul recommended which I still have lying about. Remarkably good for < $200, though Raul engages in a spot of hyperbole when he claims it rivals the best LOMC's. It's good but it's not that good, but at ~5% of the cost there's no disputing its value. Horses for courses...

Still, if you hear better dynamics and timing from a modded Denon than from the Orpheus then (as Dan_Ed suggested) our sonic priorities and sensitivities must be very different. The SG may well float your boat. Give it a listen and decide for yourself. Each of us is deaf in our own, unique ways. ;-)

Doug, Do you have an Astatic MF200, or what other cartridge recommended by Raul are you referring to? I have never heard any Astatic, yet.

The MM/MI sound is "different" for sure from the MC sound. It's a trade-off, as in all things human, but if one happens to prefer the good qualities of the MM/MI sound to the alternative, one can be quite content without spending the big bucks. In other words, my judgement is that the best MCs are not superior to the best of the other technologies in every way. And it's kind of fun messing with inexpensive cartridges and finding a gem here and there.

Doug, sorry to combine your comments with Arran's to draw a false conclusion. However you do say that the Straingauge will be a v.different listening experience to the Orpheus. Can you elaborate further?

Doug, re-reading your comments I get the impression that you feel the Straingauge is a thinner, 'whiter' sounding cart than the range of MCs you listed. Do you have any experience of the Decca London Reference which is an MC but loads like a MM at 47kOhms? This is the cart of choice of the tt/arm designer of my rig.
Additionally, I'm going to dig out my old Orpheus and reassess it.

I've never heard a Decca London Ref, sorry.

The original SG I heard (at RMAF a few years ago) had oodles of dynamics, a full frequency range, speed, weight, heft, etc. Everything it did it did well and nothing was distorted. However, it lost or severely attenuated the complex harmonics we're used to hearing on two familiar Vivaldi and Handel LP's. FWIW, we hear similar behavior from most SS phono stages and amps. Even the best ones we've heard (like Raul's original Essential phono/line stage) lose the lowest levels of musical harmonics. They simply fall below the sound floor of the component and are not retrieved.

People who listen to rock or other amplified/electronically manipulated music might not notice or care. We listen almost entirely to classical, with a heavy emphasis on original/early instrument recordings. Reproducing harmonic complexities with completeness and accuracy is essential to reproducing the actual sound of such music.

My resident physics/materials science genius predicted harmonic attenuation before we ever heard the SG. According to him it's virtually inevitable due to the the nature of strain gauges (don't ask me to explain the science, I'd make a fool of myself).

***
Lew,

We haven't heard an Astatic. I'll have to dig around the pile to remind myself what that MM is. I do remember that Paul and I both said that no sub-$2K LOMC that we've heard outplayed it in any significant way. A steal at 1/10 the price (whatever it is, lol).

OTOH, the MI we auditioned a couple years ago was unlistenable (to us). Paul instantly stood up and left the room, a familiar sign that something was seriously flawed and paining his hyper-sensitivity. I struggled along for a couple of LPs, tweaking this and that. I gave up once I realized that what I was trying to fix (a phase-shifted echo or ghost of each waveform) was inherent and unfixable.

It took me 30 minutes to figure that out. It took Paul 30 seconds. That's a fair estimate of the proportion between our hearing and our IQ's. ;)

Paul knew nothing about this cartridge except what he heard, not even the name. At dinner he asked, "What kind of cartridge was that? It must employ a different technology than MM or MC to behave like that. Does it work by induction or something?"

He scares me sometimes.