Allnic Puritas vs. Koetsu Stone Body


Last time I had an opportunity to compare side by side Koetsu Jade and Koetsu Jade with diamond cantilever.
I must admit that DC Koetsu was simply amazing. Compared with stock Jade it was like completly different cartridge. Much better on frequency extremes, more airy, more precise, better articulation.
After auditioning Jade DC stock Jade sounded not very interesting.

I am considering Koetsu stone body with DC to my system, but think rather about Coralstone DC.
Unfortunately Koetsu cartridges have some flaws.
They do not give the best sound money can buy,
Are overpriced,
Hard to find good match with heavy mass tonearm.

For the Coralstone I was thinking about Origin Live 12" Enterprise C tonearm 22g effective mass.

As an alternative I was thinking about Allnic Puritas cartridge paired with new 12" Reed 3P tonearm.
I know that this is different price poin compared to top of the line Koetsu, but Allnic have some unique features and seems to have some sonic advantages of Koetsu sound.

Table is TW Acustic Raven AC.

Could you kindly share your impresions about above mentioned sets and let me know some advices?
milimetr
Thank you very much for the input.
I know Graham tonearm and do not like them much.

Do you have any comparison between Reed 3Q vs. Reed 3P.

I heard that 3P is more airy and extended on top but I am curious if 3P unipivot design will be stable enough and prone against wobbling in complex orchestral music compared to gimbal 3Q design.
Dear Milimetr: I forgot about Transfiguration cartridge option, look for the Phoenix model. IMHO this cartridge has real rythmum.

As you can see there are several cartridge alternatives .

Regards and enjoy the music,
R.
Hi Suteetat, thanks for sharing. That's a shame that you haven't been able to try Koetsu/FR on the TW. I have not heard of many owners using Koetsu with TW. let me know if you ever manage to make or source an armboard and give it a go. BTW: a friend here in the UK uses the Simplicity on an AC and loves it. He changed to it from the Phantom. He runs an A90 predominantly.

FWIW: I am mainly using an Orpheus in my Reed at the moment(for personal listening). It works very well especially since I upgraded the TT to AC3 from AC1 which has improved dynamics a lot. Beforehand it was perhaps just a touch too polite with just one motor.

@Lewm, no problems Lew, as I mentioned, i agree with what you said.
I owned a Raven AC3 and now a BN. I use currently a Lyra Titan I with a
Schroder SQ. I have no desire to upgrade as it is a perfect match with my
phono the Thoress / TW. I also use mostly the Allaerts MC2 Finish with a
Pass XP25. Both setups are amazing and I am done looking for quite a
long time. That is major considering I owned several arms and cartridges
and nothing was ever perfect.

Phono stage is critical with cartridge matching and if you heard a cartridge
perform badly I doubt it is the turntable if the turntable does its job.
Tonearms of course need to match well with the arm.

I owned a Jade for a while and loved it. I was still on the merry go round
then and sold it due to lack of dynamics compared to some others. The
Allaerts easily betters it but the extremely low output demands a dead quiet
phono stage with a lot of gain. A solid state phono would be best. My
Pass for example. As for Tonearms, the best match I had at the time was
the Ikeda 12 inch. A variation of the FR go figure.

I loaned Jeff C my Jade years ago and he ended up buying one for his AC.
So the rumors of what Jeff feels about it don't add up. Back then he used it
with a Dynavector arm. I don't know now what he is using but I know he
loved it then. The Raven table has no bearing on the Koetsu sound. Yes to
the arm and again the phono. I think he used the Jade then with the high
gain version of a Tron with SUT.

TW loves a very alive sound, which is not a Koetsu forte. I don't see him
wanting one. Jeff on the other hand has his own sonic priorities and he
bought a Jade years ago although he wasn't a dealer.

Now for my personal opinion based on your system I would do either of 2
things. An Allaerts same as mine or better on a Raven 10.5 arm. It has the
some of the magic of Koetsu and beautiful detail and bass. But it will need
to match well with your phono which I feel is a risk.

The other is the Lyra Atlas with a Schroder. I am very curious to try that
myself. And the new Schroder LT seems very interesting. I have a strong
hunch it will have tremendous synergy with your Jadis. It is a medium
output MC which will also be less troubling.

In the end, please be ready to add your phono stage into the equation. I
currently have 2. During my merry go round time, I tested cartridges with
several phono stages and arms. I owned quite a few great ones, including
a preamp with a built in phono. Every cartridge sounded very different
depending on the phono stage.
Thank you very much for your input.

When I choosed the Raven AC I was considering BN turntable as well. Unfortunately I found them way too expensive and a bit too large for my system rack. When compared side by side stock Raven AC with Raven BN I found BN more detailed, more extended on top, more airy, simply better.
Then I have tried battery PSU from BN with Raven AC and found that this PSU has great contribution to BN sound.
So I decided to order Raven AC with upgraded battery PSU and feets from BN.
Now TW introduced three pulley integrated motor designed for Raven AC similar to those from BN.
Now after introducing Raven AC Anniversary turntable you can even upgrade stock AC to copper platter.
My point is that now a 95% of BN performance can be obtained for about 70% or the costs of original BN and this can be done step by step not at once.
OK. But this is only digression.

Back to the topic.
I have a possibility to make side by side comparison of Thores phonostage with Jadis JP80MC build in phoo stage.
Thoress is sonically better. Have much more adjustments flexibility and so on. However in sonic department there was no night and day difference especially when Jadis phono was paired with SUT and used with MM input.

As for the Schroeder tonearm it is very interestin option. I admire the Schroeder engineering, but there is definitely a problem with avaliability. The waiting time for their SQ tonearm was about a year or more!
It is hard to imagine for me these days. If there is such large customer demands, the smart manufacturer expandes their production capabilities not ask a buyer to wait so long. I do not know how the things going with LT tonearm.
The Frank designed Artemis Labs tonearm was much more obtainable, but heard that will be no longer offered by Artemis Labs.

As for the Allartes cartridge it is very interesting option and worth exploring.

Did you compared them with Atlas Lyra or Allnic Puritas?