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
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.
I will repeat it again just to leave it here:

This is original ZYX Boron cantilever of the Airy III cartridge, picture taken on my macro lens. Look at the stylus. The stylus itself is not glued to the cantilever as you can see. The cantilever material is solid Boron φ 0.30mm - this is what stated in the manual. Micro-Ridge Solid Diamond (0.07mm) goes throught the cantilever’s collar, this thicker part of the cantilever also black (like boron itself) @nandric @lewm

I know only one company what was able to mount their nude diamond through the boron pipe cantilever using laser etched techniques. It was Matsushita back in the ’70s. But ZYX cantilever is Boron Rod, maybe the collar on Airy’s cantilever is Boron Pipe? The collar is black and does not looks like aluminum.

If anyone can post some other stylus/cantilever combo like that please do it, to my knowledge ZYX has its unique cantilevers. This is why Nakatsuka-San never offering a factory re-tip for any of his cartridges, they can only exchange an old cart to a brand new cart with new serial number.

Do not expect that any third-party vendor can offer something like that, their method is completely different, so anyone who will retip ZYX with some third-party vendor will lose its magic!


Dear Lew, As you (should) know I would be more interested in

what Frege would say instead of Kant. But you may be more

impressed with Kant's ''transcendental subjects''. As a blind

person can ''see'' on chakster picture his ZYX has an tube on

the cantilever in which (tube) the stylus is fastened. So we

need to know the material of which this tube is made. As I

already mentioned I quoted Carr regarding the need to glue

the stylus in those fragile cantilevers. Even if those are laser

cut. By pressure fit they will break or shatter. Otherwise nobody

would use glue for this purpose. The glue between the cantilever

 and stylus is not beneficial for the rigidity of the connection. I am

 not able to judge Axel's capabilities but, if chakster is right, he

obviously destroyed the ''magic'' of my ZYX (grin).

Nandric: You have my deepest sympathies; the magic is gone and your life may never be the same ;)

I am curious: do you have any comments as to how your Zyx sounds with Axel's boron/shibata compared to the original Zyx cantilever/stylus?

Now I am no expert as Chakster so clearly pointed out in another thread but my understanding is that some glue is probably used even in situations where the stylus is mounted and attached literally through a hole in the cantilever. It is just that there is less glue in this situation. Most common with aluminum cantilevers as I believe has been pointed out, but also in use on sapphire cantilevers. Seems not to be the case with boron. 

The Zyxillion dollar question with respect to the Airy 3 is whether the stylus is even mounted into boron. It's almost certain that Zyx's .3 mm boron rod measurement refers specifically to the smaller section of the cantilever closest to the cartridge body. The .3 mm boron rod is pretty standard Namiki fare (I have a couple here with spec sheets). 

It would certainly appear that this is a "telescoped" cantilever with the section in which the stylus is mounted clearly larger in diameter than the rest of the cantilever and quite possibly made from a different material and then attached to the boron rod. This, in and of itself, is not really contradictory to anything that Zyx states in its marketing literature. 

I'm also curious, Lew, if your Universe uses this type of cantilever/stylus or something more traditional? Should be pretty easily visible. A friend of mine just mounted a Universe in the past month or two; couldn't make it out of town to visit him in the past few weeks and may have to wait until Spring to check it out-if he still has it by then LOL. He is a bit of a vinyl fetishist! But you would think if this kind of method was the be all/end all the Universe models would be using it. 

With respect to the two different mounting techniques, they obviously each have their proponents. Less glue clearly in the so called "pressure fit" through the cantilever technique but I have read that on the other side of the coin the "more glue on solid cantilever" focuses on the idea that butting the end of the stylus up against the solid cantilever and then essentially adding the glue like a welding fillet around the stylus results in more structural integrity.



@hdm, Thanks for your (moral) support  and empathy.

My ZYX has an curious history. I got this sample as present

from an friend. Alas the suspension was defective while I

was skeptical about repair possibility because of the, uh,

glued together plastic body. Skeptical because I already

owned Sony XL 88 D (D= one piece diamond cantilever/

stylus combo). This kind of cartridges are regarded as

irreparable. But Axel Schurholz is my friend with 40

years repair experience. So I posted my ZYX to him in

hope to get ''somehow'' new suspension. From this (part)

of the story you can deduce that I have no idea how my ZYX

sounded before Axel's repair. He needed to drill hole's

in the body to reach those screws on the generator. Those

are adjustments screws for the tension wire ,etc. Anyway

he phoned me with advise to also change the cantilever/

stylus for his boron/shibata combo. The stylus only retip

was not possible because ZYX cantilever/stylus construction.

I was very satisfy with the sound because back than I was

not aware about chakster's warning (grin). However my

aversion against those plastic bodies was such that I would

never buy any ZYX . I ever started an thread about irreparable

cartridges in the mentioned context but, alas, nobody was

interested despite my good intentions (grin). Anyway I hope

for my friend Lew as well my Slavic brother that their ZYX

styli will last for ever...