Shibata Stylus

I dunno 4yanx. It might of been the stereohedron. SQ....CD-4....DBX....man, is that stirring up some memories.

I remember purchasing a Sonus "Dimension 5" MM cartridge at the time that quad was pretty much becoming a dead issue. 78-79-80? The Sonus used the Shibata geometry.

You still have that many quad LPs? You may need to set up another analog rig (maybe a Dual 1228 or a Garrard Zero 100, a 4 channel cartridge, and one of those old Marantz receivers with the little joystick? Maybe 4 KLH model 17s? At that point, I'll send you my DBX LPs and a DBX 222 decoder. You could do a CD-4, SQ, DBX shootout.

The battle of the old technologies. Might be interesting.

In all seriousness, I think that there are still several manufacturers using the Shibata stylus geometry. But, it's geometry is never identical as some manufacturers tweak the cutting very slightly. It's cool to look at the stylus in a cross section. It has a LOT of surface contact. Although, cartridge alignment must become much more critical sonically.

Let me know when you want those DBX LPs. :>) Ed.

Oh, I jest ye not. I have been pondering just such an adventure. As it happens, I have an old Sony CD-4 decoder and a Tate/Fosgate SQ decoder. Have been thinking of putting together a table for fun that runs quad (for kicks, you know, man). Trouble would seem to be in finding a quad cartridge these days that isn't spent.

Oh, I'd like to give a spin to those DBX'ers - they may have been just about to get things right (or as right as they could) with DBX before the bottom fell out of the quad market. OTOH, I have heard some old SQ tapes thorough the Tate/Fosgate that sound pretty damn good.

Would you like that in DUAL MC or DUAL MM? :>)

http://www.audio-technica.com/guide/other/styli/cart.html#AT440ML

Check out "MicroLine", and let me know where to send those DBX LPs.

BTW 4yanx. I was just trying to figure out what I was using back then as quad decoder/amp. The decoder was some kind of Dynaco, but I forget which model. The amp was a "Lafayette Radio Electronics" 60 watt x4. (it was probably more like 18 watts x 4 @ 5% THD.)

The turntable was a Phillips "212 Electronic" with a Shure "M91QD" quad cartridge. It's dampening/isolation was so horrible that when the cat would walk across the room, it would send 20hz transients through the whole house. Speakers of choice were BIC "Venturi's". If I remember correctly, they were 10" 3 way's. They were cool too. I remember using ELPs "Lucky Man" to make the system feedback until the amp used to go into "protect". That was really cool too.

Man, I was a f***ing idiot.

If you interested I found a link to the Shibata Stylus type patent through Vinyl Asylum go to www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html which is the search engine page for U.S patents.Do a number search as follows Shibata 3774918,Van Den Hul 4416005,Gyger 4855989,Ogura 4105212,Namiki 4521877 You might need to add a plug-in for viewing which is available as a link from the site,the Shibata one needs it for it's drawings.Anyway you see the different styluses properly drawn and described-highly informative.