Arche headshell with London Reference cartridge - fantastic results

Thanks for the report, Howard. Another great pairing with the London/Decca pickups is any of the Townshend Audio Rock turntables, with any arm of one’s choosing (the FR64/66’s being favorites, along with the Zeta). The damping trough inherent in the design of the Rock is an ideal way to deal with the somewhat (!) resonant, undamped, and cantiliver-less design of those pickups. The Reference is the best of them all (except for perhaps the ancient 4-series Deccas), but it too benefits from the Rock’s unique capabilities.

I believe you meant to say Brian Smith, not Wilson, designed the Reference. Actually, Brian Smith is the distributor of London products, his company being Presence Audio. The pickup’s designer, and builder, is John Wright, a Decca engineer who, in 1989, I believe it was, bought the rights to manufacture the pickups. He took the Decca design and ran with it, improving the Decca Gold and Super Gold, and creating the new models Jubilee and Reference.

 I (also) bought 3 extra ''insert pieces'' on which the cart need to

 be fastened. With the included one this means 4 headshells.

I have seen one Orsonic on eBay for $300. This is the right

perspective  to judge the prices. Anyway each headshell should

have ''movable 4 pin connector'' for azimuth and eff. lenght

adjustment. Those are not cheap. My only problem with Arche

are the headshell wire. If those are too tight they influence the

working of the SRA adjustment .

.

howardalex, I could not afford Aggalos and made my own by

careful choice of headshell clips (clearaudio) and (thin) silver

wire. A kind of ''cheating the cheaters'' which is fantastic feeling(grin).

For those who can't spend a fortune for headshell wire those

Clearaudio clips are available for about 50 GBP (8X). They

are easy to solder. Use an old cart , fasten the cart in a vice

and put the clip on one of the pin-connectors. Use silver Litz

(thin) wire.

I use Ikeda 9C3 with my FR-64 S (silver wire) as well FR-7fz.

 Decca is  like Ikeda in the sense of the ''cantileverless'' kind. But

 in  MC  ''execution''. For my Arche I at last deed find the right wire:

Clearaudio with excelent clips and very thin wire.

- The heights - more flowing and  lucid, less screaming; AV101 heights seemed shouting, resonant, forced

- More relaxed sound in general, like if some stress or tension was removed

- The sound easier separates from transducers - very easy to switch my attention to it

- More 3D, soundstage better defined

- More emotional sound, following emotional line of music easier

I believe the above are derivatives of an increased resolution and microdetail retrieval. In some cases I did hear details I don't remember hearing before. 

Somewhere in the middle of the session I also added HAL-O damper on the FR64 (adjusting the VTF). Didn't pay much attention if and how big the change was - music was more important :)

After the first session I realized my mounting of the Arche to FR64S was flawed - I did not use any washer on the collar and the FR64 nut did not lock the Arche tight enough. I inserted the Arche Cu washer on teh collar, which helped to achieve a dead tight lock. Corrected the VTF and the geometry and repeated listening. After that apart from the above:

- The (upper) bass became better perceived. My system is upper bass sensitive (usually slightly deficient) and any change here is easily detectable. Properly locked Arche helped to get let me understand what is happening with bass - sounds like the 50k load I have now is too high, have to go down to 47-39-33k or whatever needed.

Changing SRA in my case is a bit tricky. The thin Ikeda silver leads  are not strong enough to hold the cart in place when I loosen the head screw to adjust the M4 SRA screw. When tightening back the nose screw I have to support the cart from below with my fingers so that it locks touching the M4 screw and not lower. I still have to play more with SRA to see what it can do. Honestly, so far the changes weren't huge.