Pani ... New ART-9 up and running ...


The Cartridge arrived and I took it down to Studio City to Acoustic Image to have Eliot Midwood set it up properly. Eliot is the bomb when it comes to setting up the Well Tempered turn tables correctly.

http://www.acousticimage.com/

So, last night I had Mr. Golden Ears over to get his assessment as well. For a brand new cartridge that had zero hours on it ... all I can say is WOW! This is one naturally musical cartridge that doesn't break the bank. Its everything I liked about the OC9-mk III, but it goes far beyond the OC-9 in every respect.

In a previous post, I talked about the many mono records I own and how good the OC-9 was with the monos. Well, the ART-9 is on steroids. Just amazing on mono recordings.

At under $1100.00 from LP Tunes, its a bargain. The ART-9 surpasses all cartridges I've had in the system before. That would include Dynavectors, Benz, Grado Signatures and a Lyra Clavis that I dearly loved. In fact, its more musically correct than the Clavis. The Clavis was the champ at reproducing the piano correctly ... the ART-9 is equally as good in this area.

Sound stage, depth of image, left to right all there. Highs ... crystalline. Mids ... female and male voices are dead on. Transparency ... see through. Dynamics ... Wow! Low noise floor ... black. Mono records ... who needs stereo?

Your assessment that the ART-9 doesn't draw attention to itself is dead on. You just don't think about the cartridge at all. Not what its doing, or what its not doing ... its just beautiful music filling the room.

Thanks again Pani for the recommendation. I'll keep posting here as the cartridge continues to break in.
128x128oregonpapa
To get the best from MM cartridge we have to take care not only aboput phono Cable Capacitance, but also about Load Resistance. Try to load MM cartridge higher than standard 47k ohm, using Naked Foil Vishay 100k ohms audio resistors (from Texas Components). Most of the MM cartridges sounds much better at 100k ohm. This upgrade cost nothing (about $36 for Vishay resistors + soldering), but it will give you the best upgrade for the money you have ever tried for MM cartridges. Vintage MM cartridges are much better anyway. This is where they become competitive with most of the MCs imo. So i will second that JLTi phono stage (under $800 now) is the best for experiments with load resistors as you can simply soldeging them in RCA plugs and easily change (plug-in or plug-out) by going higher from 47k or even lower. Same with LOMC cartridges (end a bunch of R of different values) as the JLTi is a high gain stage designed to work with 0,02 mv MCs and higher.
@pani 
thanks for the info.  i have the black cube se ii, the next version from the se.  that said i would be interested in recommendations for another phono stage that would sound more colorful.  thank you.  
There are many, many other phono stages (besides the JLTi) that also allow the user to tweak the resistive loading by one method or another.  In my opinion, this is an essential feature of any "high end" phono. If one only wants to convert from a 47K load to 100K for MM cartridges (which I agree mostly do sound best with 100K), then the more purist approach is to de-solder the 47K load resistors where they are mounted and replace them with 100K (nude Vishays, of course). Other very neutral resistors for this purpose are the Caddock TF020 (available from M Percy) and the tantalum types, if you're reluctant to pay for the Vishays.

So what about the ART9? Are you running it also with a 47K or 100K load?  In my fully balanced Atma-sphere MP1, I am finding that MCs can sound excellent with a 47K load. (I am not going to say they sound best this way, because that would be a subjective judgement, but I do think they sound a tad more open at the top end than they do with the more classic 100R to 1000R resistive loads. Like someone else said, the load R is really a load on the phono section, rather than on the cartridge.)

Pani, I am unfamiliar with the guts of the JLTi.  If you have no resistor plugged into the aux phono inputs, is there then no load at all in place? In other words, is it designed such that one MUST plug some resistance into those inputs?