Decca London Cartridge?

Sean, you are right on with your comments. As to the cartridge, this was one of the "great" cartridges at that time. This, along with the Shure and ADC xlm were tops on peoples list. The version I had was the Decca Gold. Not a great tracker but did it ever pound out the music and cut away all the glare! I guess todays Lyra Helikon would be considered today's Decca Gold (IMHO).

The Decca cartridges are still available, and they have been improved to track at about 1.8 grams. They still use the "Decca Principle" of using no cantilever and have a very revealing sound. Some people consider these cartridges to be a little "too forward", but there is no doubt that they have a very unique sound that is highly regarded by some audiophiles. For the cost of a VDH retip, you could buy one of the newer models brand new. If you want the top of the line Jublilee, then you'll have to pay more.

My Decca London was perhaps the twin of yours, and made about the same time. Blue case or grey? The latter was the Export model, selected for response from the regular run. Very different technology, quite interesting: no cantilever, stylus assembly kept under tension by a string, conical stylus... ) I ran mine in a Decca International arm, a damped unipivot. Since the cartridge has no internal damping, the arm has to supply it. Very lively and dynamic sound, tracking not great but OK for most cuts. IMO worth retipping if the price is right, but I doubt that I would use it in my main system (LP12 Lingo, rewired RB300, Cardas Heart, Klyne SK-5A) today.

It may interest you that the very earliest Decca stereo pickups (long before 1973) had Horizontal and Vertical groove modulation outputs (Left + Right and Left - Right), and required a mixing network to come up with the Left and Right signals of the 45 degree stereo LP format. In spite of this inconvenience, the pickups were regarded as something special.

I heard one of these many years ago and recall being very impressed. I understand that one can get them re-tipped by Garrot (sic) Brothers.