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Boron Cantilever and Ruby Cantilever, Why Ruby?

I have noticed that many of the better cartridges use Boron cantilevers. I know that Soundsmith uses a Ruby cantilever. I was thinkin of having my Benz Wood Body cartridge retipped but was not sure if the different material used for the cantilever will impact compliance and even sound. Why not boron like the original?
tzh21y
chakster's avatar
chakster
2,482 posts
 
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's avatar
nandric
3,263 posts
 

In one of his contributions J. Carr explained advantages and

disadvantages of cantilevers materials. Aluminum (alloy) has

as advantage that the stylus can be pressure fitted instead of

glued. Exotic materials are all frail so the stylus must be glued.

The glue  between stylus and cantilever is obvious disadvantage.

He explained why he prefer boron and mentioned not to like

the sound of sapphire kinds.

lewm
6,770 posts
 
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.
nandric's avatar
nandric
3,263 posts
 

Dear Lew, I quoted Carr because I can remember what he stated.

BTW I asked the question. Dertonarm also explained to me why

he prefers aluminum cantilevers. Alas I forget his arguments and

am reluctant to bother him because he is very busy at present.

Like my Slavic brother chakster i own different so called ''top

carts'' with aluminum cantilevers: ''some'' FR's, some Ikeda's,

one Miyabi Standard and Andreoli's Magic Diamond. I also

own ZYX Airy 3 with boron cantilever and glued stylus in a kind

of tube which is glued on the (boron) cantilever. My Friend Axel

Schurholz was not impressed with ZYX stylus and substituted

for his own boron/shibata combo. Despite of those ''facts'' I am

still most impressed with Berillium cantilevers. Alas no hard facts

for this opinion but, as you know, we are all emotional connected

with this hobby so the question is not about the truth (grin).



lewm
6,770 posts
 
So, are you suggesting that what I am seeing in Chakster's photo of his Airy 3 cantilever/stylus is a stylus pressure-fitted to a nubbin of either boron or aluminum, the end of which is glued to a boron cantilever, end over end, telescope-like?  (I ask, because it appears to be a stylus directly pressure fitted to some cantilever.  I cannot be sure of the cantilever material construction, but I assume it to be boron because I am further led to believe that ZYX uses boron cantilever. Ergo, I think I am seeing a stylus pressure fitted directly into boron.)  This should create enough philosophical/logical if/then dichotomies for you that you can easily further avoid answering the actual question.  But I enjoy it. What would Kant say, for example?  I own a ZYX Universe.  It is the best of all my LOMC cartridges, no matter how the stylus is mated to the cantilever.

Dertonearm is in good company with Shure Corporate scientists who actually compared the characteristics of various cantilevers in their 1978 white paper, and came to the conclusion that alu was in fact superior to several others, including beryllium.  Thus they went back to Alu in their V15 Type III.
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