additional processing and customs charges on goldring 1006 or nagaoka mp150

@roberjerman

then you should try a decent MM/MI cartridges like Grace F-14 LC-OFC with Boron/Micro Ridge, Grace LEVEL II, Stanton 981 with Stereohedron or Stanton WOS, Grado Signature XTZ, Pioneer PC-1000 MKII, AT-ML180 OCC, Glanz MFG-61 , Victor X-1 and X-1II ... most of them sounds even better with 100k Ohm loading instead of standard 47k Ohm.

Everything depends on particular model of the cartridge, not just the brands. I have all those, but lower models from the same brads were not as good as their higher top of the line models.

However, if you like conical DENON DL-103 more than anything else then you’re not the one who prefer detailed, airy sound. Those oldschool cartridges sounds superior with proper diamonds like modern Replicant-100, i’ve tried various SPU, but the one with Replicant-100 (SPU Royal G MKII) is the only good SPU in my opinion, those conical SPU are terrible like the 103.

I have not tried the FR-1mk3F, but i own the Fidelity-Research FR-7f which is superior and definitely the best FR cart ever made (along with Fz version). I use it on Lustre GST-801 tonearm btw. On Luxman PD-444.

I don’t understand why you’re underrate MM cartridges, especially if your reference is DL-103 MC!?

I like all MM from the list above much better than my MC of any kind at any price up to $5000. I hate conical styli, they does not extract musical information from the record groove right, the inferior oldschool midrange sound - this is all about conical. This is the reason people refurbishing their stock DL-103 with LineContact and Ruby cantilevers.

I would never recommend an MC cartridge for begginer and my advice is to avoid everything with Conical/Spherical stylus tip. Record wear factor is also much higher with conical profiles and high tracking force of the low compliance cartridges is also very bad. And finally very few modern tonearms are designed for low compliance carts, it must the the arm with very high effective moving mass to work right with DL-103 or SPU etc 

I just don’t understand what’s the hype about those DENON DL-103 despite the fact they are very cheap among the MC carts on the market.

Speed of sound in beryllium and boron is very similar.

But boron could be grown around a rod and made into an extremely thin, incredibly stiff, and light pipe.

All beryllium cantilevers that I’m aware of are rods.

I’ve heard both and prefer pipes.

Yes, by the late 80’s into the very early 90’s... it had been decided in the general sense, by all involved, by manufacturers and buyers of said cartridges, that hollow boron tubes for cartridge cantilevers..was the ’ne plus ultra’ of materials for making the best phono cartridges.

Everything else was not as good a combination of mass, damping, resonance, and frequency of resonance. By the very existence of that particular attribute in the best cartridges, it was, by fiat and overwhelming example...declared ’king’.

We’ve slowly been going backward ever since, regarding mainstream use. Or course, quite a few more cartridges were made back then, and costs were lower and so on. So now, the hollow boron tubes are pretty well extinct and we’ve got inferior materials for the mid to high priced cartridges and then aluminum for the bottom, as per normal. Only in the extreme high end, nearly moving into 6 figures for a price, do we finally get back into better or newer with extreme aims in quality. Things like diamond are attempting to happen. Of course, I’m no expert in this but the lay of the ground does tend to look a lot like this particular recipe/mix.

@jcarr
Thanks for your comment, Jonathan
It’s always nice to have an inside from the industry leaders

Last year I had the pleasure of listening to the same exact album on LP and R2R.

If I recall correctly, the tape deck was a Sonorous Audio ATR 10 RTR, turntable was a Doehmann Helix 1 with Schroder CB 9CB tonearm, cartridge was an Etna (low-output MC), phono stage was by Wadax, and speakers were Tidal Audio’s Akira.

Despite that the cartridge was not an MM or MI, the sound of the two formats was exceedingly similar, with the LP perhaps being at the level of a first-generation dub of the tape (if that).

Also, I know a number of well-known album producers and musicians who use Lyra’s and other MC cartridges for both their personal listening pleasure as well as evaluating test pressings of upcoming albums.

Neither of the above would be possible if MC cartridges were incapable of sounding like tape (contrary to invictus005’s assertions).

I often quote this TAS article to show the people what was a choice (of monitoring cartridges) for mastering engineers like Doug Sax, Kavi Alexander and others. J.Tammblyn Henderson reports on a listening session comparing digital master tape, analogue master tape, direct-to-disc lacquer and the "live" mike feed; the report consists of a long conversation among J. Boyk, Keith Johnson, Doug Sax, and JTH himself. " What cartridge could have the "lowest distortion of all," "uncanny" resolution, better than master tapes?". The choice was an MM cartridges: Audio-Technica AT-ML170, Technics EPC-100c mk4, Stanton 881s mkII. Well it was in the 80s or early 90s, maybe we have better MC cartridges today, but the price for new MC cartridges is 10 times as much, compared to those vintage MM from this article. There is a comments about MC from that era below the article.

Boron didn’t become popular because beryllium was phased out - they coexisted for years, and during that period the cartridge designer was free to choose whichever one he felt best suited the design that he was developing.

I prototyped with beryllium a few times in the 1980s, but never totally warmed up to the sound. Around the same period I also prototyped with boron, but again with inconclusive results. And ruby / sapphire. And diamond etc.
In the end, for our early cantilevers I settled on a whisker-reinforced aluminum alloy (in rod rather than pipe form).

However, the whiskered aluminum worked best with a coaxial 3-way damper arrangement, which was time-consuming to adjust and sometimes drifted (or was whacked) out of alignment in the field.

Therefore, in the mid-1990s we put more effort into formulating rubber compounds for dampers, and the success of this allowed us to change our cantilevers from whiskered aluminum to boron rod.

Very interesting, but it’s a choice of designer. The unique beryllium cantilever that comes to my mind is the one we can see on Victor X-1 or X-1II MM cartridges. The shape of these cantilever is not like anything else. For some reason JVC Victor never used Boron on their top of the line models from the 70s/80s and i believe it was a choice of the designer of those particular carts. They are excellent MM cartridges. One step backward was X-1IIE with Titanium cantilever according to manual (some people think it was Beryllium). It’s dark color, so i’m not sure.

One of the keys to a cartridge’s sonic personality is the matching of dampers to cantilever - some dampers that work exceedingly well with boron are less good with aluminum or beryllium, some dampers are more oriented to sapphire / diamond cantilevers, yet other dampers are all-rounders that work tolerably well across a range of cantilever shapes and materials (but these may not nail the sound as well as a specifically dialled-in damper(s).

I don’t know of any other manufacturer, except for the Grace, who released all kinds of cantilevers for their MM cartridges. I’ve been collecting them over the years, one day i will compare them on my F-14 and on Level II cartridges. The aluminum was good, but Boron Pipe, Ruby and even Ceramic is what i’d like to compare, they are still sealed. The advantage of the MM cart is the ability to change styli/cantilever combo to find the best sounding combination on the same generator/cartridge.

I wonder what do you think about Ceramic cantilevers?

Thanks

Hi Chakster: Many audio designers are also audiophiles, and whether they subjectively like the outcome of a particular design choice will inevitably affect whether that design choice finds its way into the final product (or not). So yes, these choices very much involve the preferences of the individual designer, and/or the brand. Some of these preferences may be objective, but some may be subjective.

Likewise for mastering engineers / record producers. On the occasions that I visited Keith Johnson, he was using Spectral MC cartridges (which I designed), and I know that Tam Henderson was a Lyra cartridge user, even after we stopped working with Spectral.
Doug Sax was more oriented towards MM cartridges, AFAIR.

Although I’ve designed MM cartridges, for various reasons they never went into production. Kavi Alexander has been pushing us to make an MM / MI cartridge, so I may get around to doing this eventually (grin).

I’m aware of the Victor X-1, and I also know why they chose that particular shape for the cantilever (this is because I had the same exact insight, but wasn’t aware that anyone had made such a thing until I saw the X-1). But studying the X-1 cantilever and how it was made suggests that it couldn’t have been an easy or straightforward task, and probably resulted in a rather high rate or rejected parts and greater wastage (of a toxic material - lol). I would guess that is a key reason why it didn’t survive into later models.
That, and the fact that the clearance between cartridge body and LP will be lessened, which could make the cartridge more difficult to use and consequently less popular among potential customers.

It is true that in the first part of the 1970s JVC focused on MMs, but after JVC launched its first MC cartridge, the MC-1 direct-scan design in 1977, they focused on this family as their flagship range.

http://20cheaddatebase.web.fc2.com/needie/NDVICTOR/MC-1.html

These JVCs are the spiritual ancestors to the modern Audio Technics ART-1000.

As you point out, most of this family used beryllium cantilevers, although duralumin was also employed.

On the other hand, we must not forget that other big manufacturers such as Technics / Panasonic largely shied away from beryllium in favor of boron, likewise for Denon. So again, different designers, different decisions.

Regarding ceramic, there was a time in the early 1980s when it was one of the flavors of the day, but that trend didn’t last, which suggests that it wasn’t the easiest material to make good sound with.

On a technical level, ceramic tends to be extremely high-Q with very little internal lossiness, and it isn’t particularly light, therefore it wouldn’t be the first material that most cartridge designers would reach for (smile). If you were to use it, you may find that you need an additional method of damping (above and beyond the normal cartridge dampers). Constrained layer damping, or tuned mass damping, or something like that.

kind regards, jonathan

@jcarr 

It is true that in the first part of the 1970s JVC focused on MMs, but after JVC launched its first MC cartridge, the MC-1 direct-scan design in 1977, they focused on this family as their flagship range.

http://20cheaddatebase.web.fc2.com/needie/NDVICTOR/MC-1.html

These JVCs are the spiritual ancestors to the modern Audio Technics ART-1000.

As you point out, most of this family used beryllium cantilevers, although duralumin was also employed.

Right, and the Victor L-1000 was the best one with printed coil right above the diamond, but most of them have a very short life. I don't know if it's easy to fix those cartridges (maybe you know better), but most of them have a problem with one channel or with both channels even if they are looks mint. The price for a used Victor L-1000 dramatically increased after M.Fremer visited Audio-Technica factory in Japan and they said on video what was their inspiration to make AT ART-1000. I wish i could find working Victor MC L-1000 or someone who can fix a non working samples.