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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
dover
1,165 posts
 
If you are talking about the original super gold, I have set up probably 15-20.
They are very arm sensitive. A lot of people ran them on Linn Sondeks/Ittoks in the 80's. The best I heard was with the Zeta tonearm. My feeling would be the Audiomods is not substantial enough for this cartridge. The new generation Deccas may be better.
The early Decca Golds were poorly built and the Garrott rebuild was essential.
The optimum set up required packing of bluetack between the top of the cartridge and the headshell and the impedance of the phono preamp needed to be around 22k. This tamed the top end shriek and dampened resonances.
If this is an older one I would suggest you send it to one of the rebulders such as Expert Stylus Coy for a check up and rebuild if required.
I have seen poorly set up Deccas destroy records with mistracking at end of records, so prudence and perfect set up is required.
tbg
5,263 posts
 
Eee3, I still remember the difficulties with foam on the mercury and getting it off. But with my Decca London and on the Linn LP12, it worked great.
doak
189 posts
 
The Decca London Super Gold works beautifully on my Well Tempered Labs Turntable/tonearm -- like a marriage made in heaven.
noromance's avatar
noromance
1,780 posts
 
My Super Gold was transformed when I got John Wright to fit a paratrace tip. Highly recommended. Works great in a 12" Jelco 750 on a 401. It was never happy in my LP12/ Ittok.
tbg
5,263 posts
 
It is fascinating that this old cartridge still stokes such interest. It was over thirty years ago that I tried out three Decca Londons in the back room of what I think was called Stereophile on Chicago's near Northside. One sounded much better.

No one mentions the Decca Reference cartridge. Is it still made?
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