Removable headshells 101


Due to the influence of Raul's thread on MM cartridges, I believe that some of us (perhaps for the first time), have acquired a tonearm/s with a removable headshell?
In my case, there was a vacuum of knowledge or information about what makes a good headshell and for the last 6 months a great deal of my time and effort has been expended in acquiring personal hands-on experience.
Perhaps a Forum to share experiences will help new adherents to this once denigrated (by the High End) segment of tonearm design?
128x128halcro
Nice one Nadric :-)

I was sucked into the MM thread for a while, now I listen the carts I like and all but one of the MM's sit in my cupboard arguing over who might get played next.

I have no idea how someone can make decisions on the full merits of a cartridge after using it for 4 or 5 choice cuts or several days. Then again as I am reminded, I am not as skillful or experienced as some and that is why I have to live with a cartridge for a long period of time to appreciate all its strengths and weaknesses.

cheers
My father used to say that there were three types of people in the world:-
Those who contributed
Those who benefited from that contribution
Those who did neither......the oxygen bandits
Somewhere in Holland a little Dutch man is hyperventilating
In regards to the head shell leads issue, I just did away with them completely.

When I rewired my stock Technics SL-1200 tonearm I drilled out the din connector at end of the tonearm and removed the connector (the black plastic insert)from the Technics headsheel. I then soldered the cartridges clips directly to litz wire fished the wires through the openning in the connectors.

I can still easily remove the headshell, by unclipping the clips, unscrewing the headshell and carefully fishing them through the opennings. Obviously this is a delicate procedure, but with a bit of care it can be done quickly.

As such I get the best of both worlds removable with the least connection points in the signal path.

You can see a photo that shows the end result on my "system" page.

One small precision, the picture that shows the setup is in the Full-Circle system under Benz Glider tab.
Can anyone make a suggestion of where to purchase a variety of headshells. I am looking for a light headshell presently, not real easy to find new. I have bid on a couple on ebay but I guess I have short arms and long pockets.