Boron Cantilever and Ruby Cantilever, Why Ruby?

It's an availability thing and the pricing for boron rods forced change. Manufacturers moved to as ex. sapphire and other gemstones for cost primarily but availability is also a major issue.  This is a quote right on Ortofon's site acknowledging the change a while back. 

"Over the decades, there has been an increase in the use of Boron. Elemental Boron is mostly used in high tech applications. One of Boron's benefits for our modern technology is its use in neodymium magnets, which are an alloy of neodymium, iron and boron. Boron has also been applied in manufacturing of phono cartridges: Boron cantilevers are strong, stiff, light and 100% inert. From all possible options Boron cantilever is the best, but unfortunately extremely difficult to obtain."

They do acknowledge Boron is a better choice , something I always felt showed in the sound characteristics. 

Not sure if it is Shelter or Zyx - but one of the highest models choose an aluminium cantilever over a boron one on the basis that given the other design parameters it is the better material. I don't think that it's as simple as just one item alone.

Some amazing cartridges with Aluminum cantilevers are the Miyabi, Fidelity-Research, Miyajima. That was the choice of the designers based of sound quality. 

Some other cartridges are amazing with Hollow Pipe Boron or Boron Rod, Beryllium, Ruby, Titanium or even Ceramic (the most exotic) cantilevers. 

I've owned good looking cartridges with Sapphire cantilevers and some of them are absolutely inferior compared to Beryllium or even Aluminum. 

So the answer is not in cantilever material, but in overall design of the cartridge. 

Ruby always looks nicer :)   

Nandric, I commented on this in another thread.  Chakster posted a photo of his ZYX showing that the stylus is pressure-fitted into the cantilever, not glued.  Since the ZYX has a boron cantilever, or so I believe, that would make the ZYX exceptional. Any comments? (I own a ZYX Universe, their top of the line at one time before it was replaced by Universe II, etc, etc, etc, up to Universe III, last time I looked, and I do know that it bears a boron cantilever. Universe models are sold only in the US via their distributor, Mehran.)

Naturally, JCarr would say he prefers the sound of boron vs sapphire, since he uses boron.  But he provided no data.  Shure corporation studied different cantilever materials and actually published data (in 1978) to suggest that aluminum has certain advantages, in fact.  No corporate entity does such research these days.  Acutex used titanium, which may be unique to Acutex.  It's all very interesting, but I see that Chakster has come around to my way of thinking; cantilevers do not alone determine the SQ.  No single element of construction does that, IMO.