Decca London Gold cartridge nightmare


Having read so much about the Decca London Gold cartridge, I decided to try one. Time passed and I finally found one on ebay that was within my budget. Cartridge was guaranteed to work with good results by a seller with very good feedback. Physically the cart looked neat, and everything, except for the mounting screws, was intact.

I had intended to install the cartridge in a new Kuzma Stogi S arm on a LP12 turntable but since the arm is scheduled to arrive end Oct 2008, I decided to try the Decca on my Lenco L75, with the original Lenco arm. At least to make sure all connections were OK, if not for any other reason.

What happened afterwards was pure nightmare. The results were horrendous, to say the least!

Tell me where I went wrong.

I tried tracking between 1.5 to 3gm but the sound ranged from tinny to severe breaking up. Even more startling, the groove vibrations picked up by the stylus was transmitted to the entire headshell, so you could actually hear the sound of the grooves generated acoustically by the vibration, kind of like a diaphragm or a gramophone horn. Lightly placing my finger on the headshell while a record played confirmed this. The headshell was quaking! With the preamp gain down to zero, you could hear the headshell vibration from a distance of a foot and a half, maybe even further, I kid you not.

The cartridge that I am presently using on my Lenco is a low output Audio Technica MC, the AT-OC3. No problems there. Tracks pretty well too, but not great, considering the Lenco arm was not made for MC carts. But the results were definitely more sane than the Decca!!

What's happening? Help!

Thanks for any advice, suggestions, feedback.

beck
tubemoose
Tbg, I still have a working Keith Monks mounted on a Linn LP-12 valhalla with a Decca supergold. I've been using this combination for over 20yrs. and still haven't anything found anything that I like better. The Keith Monks was designed for the decca and is a marriage made in heaven.
I heard a few Deccss at the weekend on a Trans Fi Terminator arm the Jubilee was stunning the most alive Cartridge I ever heard no tracking issues the parrel tracking arm really coped well and they just created pure musical joy
Hi, talking about Decca cart combination with tone arm, I have an Audiomods type V (Hotrod mod based on Rega RB301 arm : http://www.audiomods.co.uk) and I would like to install a Decca Super Gold on it, but your comments on the bad behavior depending on tone arm are scaring me a bit.
Does anyone has a feedback experience on this kind of combination ?

Thank you for your help.
Decca is a great cartridge, but needs an arm that will not transmit the vibrations down the arm.... I've heard it in a number of very heavy arms and think the sound is quite good....different, but I can understand someone wanting it.