@yogiboy LP gear sells both of those brands without those charges! The charges are on the custom conrol on arrival, not by the shop on departure. I’ve never heard about import tax in the USA, but there is always import tax in Europe for example. The shops just tying to say they are not responsible for any custom charges, that’s it. |
Absolutely no problem to mount any cartridge on your turntable/headshell since you will have a dedicated overhang gauge with your pioneer turntable for pioneer tonearm, it will take 5 minutes to set up your cart in the headshell correctly with that plastic overhang gauge. You don't need anything else and any special knowlenge. Custom charge depends on the custom regulation in your country. Thge better cartridges would be Ortofon M20 FL Super (under $200) or Fidelity-Research FR-5E (under $150). Another killer cartridge is Stanton 881s and 881s MKII from the 80s, read this article about it. |
@roberjerman I use a Denon 103R mc cartridge on it. Way better than any MM cartridge! Have you tried all MM cartridges to make such statement for a cheap MC with a conical tip and alluminum cantilever? Even DL-107 MM cartridge is much better than DL-103 MC, and BTW your low compliance DL-103 is a total mismatch with the tonearm of PLX1000 (you can measure the cartridge/tonearm resonance frequency if you don’t believe). DL-103 must be used on high mass tonearms only. If you use a conical tip then you don’t even know what’s on the records, or you may like rolled off frequency on both ends, if that’s your sound then it’s fine, but it does not makes your average MC any better. It’s never too late to learn a bit about different profiles of the styli, different materials for cantilevers etc ... to understand the progress and know-how in cartridge design appeared in the 70s and 80s. Or you can ignore it if you’re happy with your oldschool Denon cartridge designed in 60s for radio broadcast. You may also like 78rpm records, but it does not makes them better than MicroGroove 33rpm LPs. The difference between your conical Denon and a proper MM cartridge is huge! But you may never tried a good MM yourself. |
@invictus005 12g does not work well for low compliance cartridges, you need 20-30g effective mass to be optimal for DL-103, Ortofon SPU and many other low compliance carts. Pioneer made for professional market, the company itself is DJ oriented nowadays, all their products are for DJs/Clubs. This is their niche and nothing else. If they were Technics they could make P-10 Exclussive again, but Hi-End is not their interest anymore. Pioneer is the leader on the mass market for clubs/djs, but mostly with their CDJ players and mixers, not with their vinyl turntables, professionals still use Technics. The best material for the cantilever in my opinion is the Beryllium (not available today) and this is one of the reasons those vintage cartridges with Beryllium cantilevers are so special. It was not a problem to use Hollow Boron Pipe for giant company line JVC Victor back in the days, but their choise was a Beryllium for the very best cartridges ever made, such as Victor X-1 and X-1II. And let me add one of the best cartridge made today - The Garrott Brothers (Dynamic Coil MM) P-77i from Australia. However, the vintage carts from the 80s are still better choice. This is the case when you pay very reasonable price for lightly used and perfectly working cartridges from the era when MM was a king (not the MC). Some of them utilized technology and materials that are not available today in MM design anymore (Tapered Boron Pipes or Beryllium cantilevers, patented generators like Moving Flux for example). Some of the high priced new mm cartridges today doesn't have a Nude Diamond, they are tipped. There is no competition between MM designers anymore. And some new "
Coreless straight-flux cartridge " high-end MM cartridge from Japan (posted recently by Jonathan Carr in our MM thread) cost $8000 ? This is something new: http://topwing.jp/RedSparrow-en.html |
Grace, Pioneer, Audio-Technica, Victor used beryllium cantilevers in their top of the line cartridges, then it was prohibited and Boron became the top choice. I’m not trying to say that beryllium is better than Boron, but Beryllium is definitely better than Alluminum or Titanium. Density (gr/cm): 1.84 Beryllium / 2.69 Aluminum / 4.54 Titanium Young Modulus (kg/mm): 28,000 Beryllium / 7,400 Aluminum / 11,000 Titanium Velocity Of Sound Propagation (m/sec): 12,600 Beryllium / 6,420 Aluminum / 5,990 Titanium Most of these cartridges are very difficult to find in good working condition and are expensive. Best for OP to get either a modern Ortofon MM or modern Audio Technica MM. Yes, but i have spare in perfect condition, not only me, but many audiogon user have them. For example the Audio-Technica AT20SLa is about 350 euro with shipping. This is amazing high compliance cartridge. If you think the modern AT is better just read this: https://www.vinylengine.com/turntable_forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=100109AT-Ml170 is also available along with NOS Victor X-1 if anyone interested, just PM me. Time machine in action! Different engineers and cartridge designers are working in the companies like Audio-Technica, people who designed cartridges in the 70s are retired, new people are woking on the new cartridges. The situation on the high-end market today is way different than in the 70s/80s. New cartridges are not always better, sometimes it’s compromise, especially when we’re talking about Moving Magnet cartridges, the trend today is MC, not MM. |
@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 |
@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. |
@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. |
@invictus005 Beryllium cantilevers only come in a rod form, whereas boron can be made into a pipe. Pipes are potentially lighter and pipes can be made with a wider diameter increasing stiffness even further. No, check the Pioneer PC-1000 MKII MM cartridge, it was top of the line model made by Pioneer for their Exclussive turntables, this cartridge comes with BERYLLIUM PIPE cantilever: http://audio-database.com/PIONEER-EXCLUSIVE/etc/pc-1000ii-e.html I got two samples of this great cartridge on hands, it’s a stellar performer! Here you will see this cartridge on Pioneer Exclussive P-3 turntable, the price for this turntable was 600 000 Yen in 1981 http://audio-database.com/PIONEER-EXCLUSIVE/player/p3-e.html ... And it was more expensive than Technics SL1000mk3 (SP10mk3 with EPA-100MKII in Obsidian Plinth) available for 500 000 Yen in 1982. Boron is fine, but always much more expensive than beryllium when it comes to vintage cartridges. |
