Benz LP Ebony, and S-Class Ebony

For reasons that escape me, the Ebony line of cartridges does not get the respect it deserves, and they get overlooked by audiophiles in serach of a world-class cartidge.

I mention this for the benefit of those who might be in a similar situation to Stringreen and are pondering a switch. If you do, you may be changing the presentation but not necessarily making an improvement.

Perhaps the LP has been around too long to catch the eye of audiophiles? Perhaps the slightly (and I emphasize slightly) slow, bloated sound of the lesser wood-bodied cartridges in the line causes people to overlook this fine cartridge?

With the LP, they got it right ... really right - not throwing out the wonderful things that all Benzes do in the nuance and delicacy department in the process.

I've not heard the "S" class version, but would feel confident in taking the advice of those who have done the upgrade. Their sensibilities are finely tuned to the virtues of the original LP, and I would trust them that Benz didn't screw up a good thing.

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier

Hi Stringreen,

These cartridges are sensitive to .02-.03 grams tracking force changes. Yes, that's not a typo. You should be able to find a few digital gauges in that $100 price range that will give you .01 g accuracy.

You'll find quite a few comments by Doug Deacon and myself on this topic - that you want to be on the threshold of mistracking. Once you get more than say, .05 to .10 grams above this threshold, the dynamics tend to become compressed. I wonder how many wonderful cartridges have been misjudged because of lack of attention to this?

Also, my experiments with arc-style protractors (see my forum - in the Setup and Tweaks section) along with the several active threads on the topic on this forum for a lively discussion. Using an arc-style protractor has been a revelation to me.

One of the side benefits of this more accurate alignment (arc protractor) is that VTA becomes less twitchy. Amen to that!

Mintlp is (according to reliable reports) producing reasonably priced (for one-off work) arc-style protractors and delivering them in2-3 weeks. You can read about all of the details in the above referenced threads.

Enjoy!
Thom @ Galibier