Peter and Soundsmith are terrific.
Anybody out there re-cantilever their cartridge with a Soundsmith Contact Line diamond ?
The cantilever on my Dynavector 20x2 is damaged. Dynavector
wants X number of dollars to exchange it. Then I read about Soundsmith's
rebuild option, which is intriguing. A feature aspect of their cantilever
rebuild is their Contact Line Diamond stylus as opposed to Dynavector's Micro
Ridge Nude diamond.
"The Soundsmith Contact Line diamond stylus has three times the contact area in the vertical direction of the groove wall compared to an elliptical shaped diamond".
I thought I was in the clear, but now I'm informed that a Contact Line Diamond stylus with three times the contact area, picks up a ton of surface noise off the record. So much so that the surface noise can become forward on all but the most pristine records. So much so that the surface noise becomes intrusive.
Anyone out there had a Soundsmith modification done to their cartridge, if so which option had you had done, and what's been your expience?
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I have an old Grado Reference that Peter retipped twice. I finally decided to buy a Soundsmith cartridge and started with the Voice. It was much better than the Grado and with the same stylus/cantilever I was using. I eventually got that retipped during the pandemic and it took awhile. I bought their lowest priced Othello as a temp and was amazed at how close it got to the Voice in terms of resolution and dynamics. I finally upgraded my phono stage to one that could handle low output cartridges and purchased the Sussurro. This is the best cartridge I’ve heard although I haven’t heard any cartridge north of $10K. Check out Peter’s videos on the Soundsmith web site. They’re very educational. |
Hello chakster- Thx for your suggestions, I will take them under consideration.As for your suggestion (Skip the Dyna 20XHO2 refurbishing, & go SS MI). Don’t think didn’t think about it.My previous set-up was Grado Sonata 1, a MI cart, right? And it hummed. Checked the grounds - OK.One reason for picking the Dyna 20X2 (with-in my budget) was to check if the hum was coming from the MI cart. As it turns out the HOMC doesn’t hum. But the re-tipping thing goes a bit deeper in my case. I never got use the Dyna 20X2 when I bought it, the cantilever was bent by the installer. I didn’t want to throw in the towel. So if you are going to fix something why not use superior parts?Look at it this way, the designer has to engineer a product, with cost restraints. It sells for a price, the materials used have to fit with-in those restraints in-order to turn a profit. If they could use better materials in a product with a $1000 dollar price point, why wouldn’t they? So it only stands to reason if one is going to repair something why not take a said song & make it better? - - - Will it sound identical .... perhaps not, but at least the hum is gone.
As for moving up to a LOMC, my preamp is designed for MM cartridges an (Audion Premier 2box) which I love, so I’m not going to go on another audio quest to accommodate a MC set-up. Besides, with the limitations of my listening room, I couldn’t justify the expense of a ZYX cartridge with the sonic gains it would render. In an acoustically ideal room .... yes. |
@thehorn alas… Chackster has left the building…. several years on now… Enjoy the music ;-) BTW had it roll both ways w Soundsmith retips…. But in general + |
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