Decca cartridge experiences

I had many Londons early in my audio career. As you say they are a love/hate relationship. I don't really recall what caused me to move away from them, probably MCs, but I do firmly remember that a knife edge bearing tone arm was unusable. I did have a Decca International and actually recall that I got better performance from another arm, the Keith Monks. I would imagine that an air bearing arm would be tight enough and massive enough for the cartridge. I have a Schroeder arm and am thinking of buying a Decca Jubilee. Frank Schroeder told me that he knows of several dedicated Decca lovers using his arm with great success.

In Europe and the UK you will find many Decca users.

Tbg,

If you do buy a Decca Jubilee for your Schroeder, I hope you will post a review, as this has got to be one of the most interesting match-ups I've ever heard of. In my Maplenoll, the Decca simply will not track without damping, and I'm still working on the damping. It worked for me once, I can make it work again...back to the basement to try.

I've had to strip down and completely re-build my recently-acquired Maplenoll, but soon, hahahahahaha....Damn, I hope it works.

P.S. I just ordered a Decca International Tonearm for peanuts, NOS.

Interesting thread. I own a "London" that has been sitting in a drawer; I bought it out of curiosity years ago.

It gave me some of the most dynamic and detailed sound that I have ever gotten out of my turntable, it sounded like music!; but I could not get the thing to stop humming (typical grounding-problem noise). Yes, I strapped the two ground wires of my tonearm; nothing helped. I used it in a Syrinx PU3 and an ET II with damping trough.

Any suggestions for solving the noise problem would be appreciated. By the way, while not perfect, tracking was reasonably good in the ET.

Interesting you should bring up the issue of hum, which I conquered just last night! The Decca tracked quite well in a Mayware I had mounted on an AR-XA, and given it is a Decca, even in this modest 'table it matched or beat my two "high-end" spinners with other cartridges, one being a Maplenoll, the other being an Audiomeca. But on the AR it hummed, a problem which, once the music started, disappeared into the background. On the Maplenoll, however, not a bit of hum, and though there is a ground wire to the arm, I have not connected it to ground, an unexpected result.

My Decca has four pins (the ground wires connected together via a looped wire), does yours? The Maplenoll has a lead platter, and so perhaps this is shielding the motor. As with some head-amps and phono stages, you just have to move things around, connect and disconnect ground wires, try your tonearm wire in different positions and so on (this is the "bitch" and "hate" part of the Decca experience). Without knowing what your 'table is I can come up with nothing else. But there is a turntable mat made out of graphite, the Boston Mat1, which might double as shielding of some sort. It also sounds - from a design point - superb. The Maplenoll also features a damping trough at the headshell, with the result that the Decca tracks perfectly (so far) in this set-up, sounding like a "normal" cartridge (now I have to play with viscosity and so on).

If you want your Decca to track superbly, then get yourself a Decca tonearm! While this is dissed as cheap, it is quite a brilliant piece of engineering (pre-empting the Platine Verdier and Schroeder tonearms), and Ken Kessler, for instance, keeps his Decca set up in one, which he considers still superior in the usual Decca ways to his Koetsu Urishi in SME 10 turntable! Don't give up! And thanks for contributing.