Raul, I was in the home of another audiophile last week, to audition his huge horn system; with mammoth horn woofers, the multi-way speaker takes up half his listening room. His cartridge was a special Audio Note Io that has field coil magnets (i.e., the magnet is an electro-magnet that must be separately energized). $10K, if you can find one, since they are discontinued. Anyway, during the course of listening to 3-4 LPs, the sound suddenly went very sour, and upon close inspection the owner found that the stylus had come off the cantilever of his Io. Either the glue failed (if the stylus was glued) or the press fit failed due to fatigue. He never lost his cool, however, because, he said, he has another such Io, NOS. I would have been tearing my few remaining hairs out of my head. It takes grande cojones to be a high-end consumer.
Fremer's review of the Anna cartridge
Fremer reviews the $8499 cartridge very positively, but it takes three different samples of the cartridge for him to get there. The first sample exhibited "an incompatibility between the adhesives used and the elastomer of which the cartridge's damper is made." Fremer notes "[e]vidently, however, this problem didn't affect every Anna that left the factory." Wow, what a relief. In the second sample, apparently "some the glue that secures the stylus in the cantilever had dripped." The third sample, after 100 hrs of break-in finally delivered. Fremer suggests buying and using an USB microscope as part of the cartridge buying process.
Does anyone else think this is absolutely nuts? It seems to me, at this price level, every single cartridge should be absolutely perfect. Haven't Ortofon heard of quality control? This also applies to Lyra whose $9500 Atlas cartridge had the stylus affixed to the cantilever at an angle that made it virtually impossible to get the SRA of 92 degrees.
Does anyone else think this is absolutely nuts? It seems to me, at this price level, every single cartridge should be absolutely perfect. Haven't Ortofon heard of quality control? This also applies to Lyra whose $9500 Atlas cartridge had the stylus affixed to the cantilever at an angle that made it virtually impossible to get the SRA of 92 degrees.
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- 123 posts total
- 123 posts total