Boron Cantilever and Ruby Cantilever, Why Ruby?

Cynic that I am, I cannot help but think that the veritable torrent of Universe variants that we have seen in the US over the past 3-5 years (Uni II, Uni Premium, Uni this, Uni that, and now Uni III) is due to the realization on the part of ZYX that by introducing new models with ever better review comments, it is possible to double and even triple the original price of the original Uni without eliciting screams of anguish from the faithful (because after all the newest version is always the best), thereby enriching those in the chain of production.

I have a neighbor who is like hdm's friend; he is upgrading his phono systems at least every 6 months.  At a point in time when he still owned a pair of Sound Lab speakers that he bought from me (the sound of which I therefore knew quite well), I heard the original Uni in a Talea tonearm.  I am not easily impressed, but the Uni blew me away with its, I hate to say it, holographic presentation.  (HP first coined this term, and I generally regard him as the king of blather and at the same time maybe the best audio reviewer ever.)  Anyway, when I had the opportunity to purchase one at a very good price from one of our colleagues here on the Analog Forum, I jumped on it.  I am not sorry.  If the subsequent re-iterations of the original Uni are as much better than the original as they are said to be, I guess even greater pleasures are out there to be had. But one or another of my MM or MI cartridges may be better yet.

So, are you suggesting that what I am seeing in Chakster's photo of his Airy 3 cantilever/stylus is a stylus pressure-fitted to a nubbin of either boron or aluminum, the end of which is glued to a boron cantilever, end over end, telescope-like?  (I ask, because it appears to be a stylus directly pressure fitted to some cantilever.  I cannot be sure of the cantilever material construction, but I assume it to be boron because I am further led to believe that ZYX uses boron cantilever. Ergo, I think I am seeing a stylus pressure fitted directly into boron.)  This should create enough philosophical/logical if/then dichotomies for you that you can easily further avoid answering the actual question.  But I enjoy it. What would Kant say, for example?  I own a ZYX Universe.  It is the best of all my LOMC cartridges, no matter how the stylus is mated to the cantilever.

Dertonearm is in good company with Shure Corporate scientists who actually compared the characteristics of various cantilevers in their 1978 white paper, and came to the conclusion that alu was in fact superior to several others, including beryllium.  Thus they went back to Alu in their V15 Type III.

Nandric, I commented on this in another thread.  Chakster posted a photo of his ZYX showing that the stylus is pressure-fitted into the cantilever, not glued.  Since the ZYX has a boron cantilever, or so I believe, that would make the ZYX exceptional. Any comments? (I own a ZYX Universe, their top of the line at one time before it was replaced by Universe II, etc, etc, etc, up to Universe III, last time I looked, and I do know that it bears a boron cantilever. Universe models are sold only in the US via their distributor, Mehran.)

Naturally, JCarr would say he prefers the sound of boron vs sapphire, since he uses boron.  But he provided no data.  Shure corporation studied different cantilever materials and actually published data (in 1978) to suggest that aluminum has certain advantages, in fact.  No corporate entity does such research these days.  Acutex used titanium, which may be unique to Acutex.  It's all very interesting, but I see that Chakster has come around to my way of thinking; cantilevers do not alone determine the SQ.  No single element of construction does that, IMO.

I wonder what is the human toxic dose of boron, in terms of cubic cantilevers.

Raul is correct about Be. But nearly all heavy metals are toxic, if enough of any one of them enters one's system. Some, like Be, more than others, like boron, of course. I was originally just jesting as regards the tiny size of a cantilever in relation to the potential for actual toxicity.

And I agree with Raul on the qualitative effects of changing the material structure of the cantilever, although I would not claim that I can listen to a cartridge and tell you whether it has a Boron or a Ruby cantilever.

Sorry, John,and anyone else. I did not check the periodic table or even think hard before calling them heavy metals. My bad. Your point about the relative lack of toxicity of Boron (at least in ionic form) was exactly what I was inferring to begin with.

All this expertise is less impressive in the internet era than it once might have been. We can all Google. It might be more fun to get back to discussing cantilever materials and their effect on LP reproduction. (I apologize to all for starting this sidebar about toxicity.)