Anyone who has had a VdH Colibri for over 1000hrs

Hi Cfluxa. Silicon damping (and any anti-skate) degraded the sound on SME V, which has fixed head holes too. I had to file the threads off the top 3mm of the 6mm screws I use to thin them so I could twist the cart. I can imagine the expression on your face right now!

Cfluxa my first Colibri was a LW too and the few I have seen have long(er) cantilevers. So if you were 1mm out with alignment you could mod the screws and/or try trade to one with a shorter cantilever etc. Maybe I should expand that to say if you get hooked to the magic of the Colibri you might end up going through a few as they are all different. So with the limited adjustability of your setup you could get radically different results even if you stick to just the XGP LWs. Some have cantilevers that are not parallel to the body, and they dont have the same height and VTA. It has only just dawned on me why you say you are scared to death.

Vusi - the only thing that scares me more than the idea of filing the threads on cartridge screws is "going through a few" of these things!

Seriously, I am interested what you think the differences are between the XGP LW and a regular XGP model? Is one more difficult to tame than the other? I believe the effective mass of my tonearm is 10.5g and the dealer told me he thought the LW would be a good match.

Cfluxa what I'm guessing you are referring to as 'regular' is in fact the Reference or higher end (and weight) cart. Must be honest the 2 XGP LWs I went through were from memory as good as the Ref XGP. I think the Ref is about 2gr heavier but it is my opinion that if effective mass wasn't an issue then the sound would be close. You are more likely to find bigger sonic differences if the cantilever length is different or when comparing to Wood and Metal bodied ones. I ventured into the Refs so I could try Copper coils and higher voltage output, options I don't remember being offered on LWs. I suspect that longer cantilever versions of Colibris are easier to tame. Might as well share that the Ref XCP H.O. (1mv) had a similar length (longer) cantilever to the last XGP LW (and was very tame/polite/tracked best) but it couldn't match the bass of the LW. Had to send it back, they installed a shorter cantilever. Now the bass was as good or better (also edgier at the top) and it sounded louder (more output?) which is great because the plan with H.O. was so I could run cart into MM input of Phono. As posted earlier I have since managed to get rid of most of the edginess.

Vusi, I believe you bought my HO Colibri, and I bought it from Mike. So, you and Mike can compare notes directly. That Colibri has nearly traveled around the globe, especially if Mike sent it to vdH before I bought it from him. I would love to hear it again, against my current crop of cartridges.