I have noticed that many of the better cartridges use Boron cantilevers. I know that Soundsmith uses a Ruby cantilever. I was thinkin of having my Benz Wood Body cartridge retipped but was not sure if the different material used for the cantilever will impact compliance and even sound. Why not boron like the original?
Dear Tzh21y:Compliance is more a cartridge suspension function that cantilever build material, what is true is that different cantilever build material change the cartridge signature sound and not necessary for better sound but different one.
Your cartridge was voiced with that kind of cantilever build material if you change it then you will have a diferent cartridge sound maybe not better but diferent. Obviously the stylus will be changed too and here things have a similar behavior: different stylus shape different sound and tracking cartridge habilities.
Btw, Elizabeth the cantilever build material that is very well know for be toxic is berillyum not boron.
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.
Tzh21y, If you just need a retip and have not broken your cantilever then Soundsmith can replace the stylus only. It cost more because it is more difficult to do. I believe it is $450. Probably still cheaper than a trade in though.
Both Berylium and Boron are toxic, but in two very different doses. You actually do need a certain amount of Boron and you'll get that through apples, leafy greens, grains, certain level in drinking water and/or multivitamins. In large doses, it does get toxic.
Berylium is really only dangerous when airborne, so machine shop working with beryllium will have very strict safety policies and safety procedures. Otherwise, you'll be fine (unless you decided to chew on the beryllium cantilever, but that amount probably won't do you too much harm although you may want to have your head checked if you do chew on it)
One of these days I'd like to compare my SoundSmith rebuilt XX-2 (snapped cantilever, so replaced with SoundSmith's ruby) with an orginal boron cantilever XX-2.
I am interested in the difference in sound. I like the way the Benz wood sounds. Soundsmith must be very busy as I have had a difficult time getting in touch with them. Do anyt other cart manufacturers use Ruby cantilevers in their better cartridges? I noticed that Lyra and Benz both use Boron.
There is the old notion of 'connotation' and the more modern one of the 'emotional meaning'. This may explain the association with jewels . No harm is done with Peter's Ruby cantilevers considering the price but think of those + 10 K Koetsus 'tuned' in synthetic precious stones. However even if those are 'real' or 'natural' one should never try to sell them as separate merchandise. Elizabeth, those Dyna 'diamonds' are those also, uh, not real?
Changing from a beryllium cantilever on the stock V15VxMR to a solid boron rod with the JICO SAS replacement stylus drastically changed the tonality of the cart. The original sounded rolled off in the high end while the SAS made it closer to neutral, but still is subtly bright (comparisons were made with vinyl that had a CD counterpart released at the same time). So... it can't be stressed enough that changing any part of a cartridge will potentially change the tone in a fundamental way.
Lewm, Beryllium has an atomic number of 4, Boron 5; hardly qualifies either as "heavy" metals. As to the toxicity of Boron compounds, borax is used as a detergent booster and boric acid as an eye wash and a "safe" insecticide.
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.
With respect to Be, its the oxide(s) that are toxic. For years and years the electronics industry commonly used BeCu (Be copper) alloys in connector pins and relay contacts. But, as with lead (solder), our big brother EPA and other regulatory agencies have decided to ban its use for "our own protection".
Boron is a very common environmental element, and its oxides are harmless for the most part (boraxes). If you measure the composition of "dust" particles, you will find boron as one of the major components besides silicon dioxide. So your are breathing these Boron containing particles in whether you realize it or not.
I am amazed they are using sapphire (ruby) or even diamond as a cantalever material. Besides the cost, these are very brittle and fragile materials.
Berylium is toxic if it is inhaled only. Thus you can have Be tweeters and so on because the Be does not become airborne. Dhl93... I used to work in the Jewelry business and have a GG. Niether Saphire or Diamond as a crystal is particularly " very brittle and fragile." How many Diamond rings have you seen break apart? Diamond cantilevers must be the crystaline form to be called "Diamond" otherwise it is just carbon.
It is fine Berylium particles that are toxic. These get lodged in the lungs and will cause berylliosis a chronique lung disease. Small dosages appear to be sufficient to cause the disease, i.e. exposure to concentrations in the range of 1mg/m3 of air.
This is a serious issue in the mining at metals industries where the beryllium is mixed in trace amounts with other less toxics dusts.
As for exposure to a cantilever made of beryllium, I would not worry.
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.)
Diamond and sapphire are extremely brittle, in that you cannot bend or flex them without breakage. I did not mean they were not strong materials.
In a long needle shaped (ie length>>>diameter) structure like a cantalever, they would be very fragile. As used in jewelry in bulk crystal form, of course not.
In a cantalever, they are probably attached to an elastomer of some sort to allow flexing and movement. This allows some degree of freedom but I still suggest that these must be handled with the utmost care.
Elizabeth, could you comment on the differences between the Karat 23 and the 17D3?
I have the 23RS so am familiar with that - just curious about the difference with the latest 17D3...
I believe the 17 refers to a 1.7mm cantilever where the 23 refers to a 2.3mm cantilever ? So there is more than one difference - material (ruby vs diamond) and cantilever length.
Heck even basic aluminium cantilever at 1.7mm would provide magic I would have thought!
Diamond and sapphire are extremely brittle, in that you cannot bend or flex them without breakage. I did not mean they were not strong materials.
In a long needle shaped (ie length>>>diameter) structure like a cantalever, they would be very fragile. As used in jewelry in bulk crystal form, of course not.
In a cantalever, they are probably attached to an elastomer of some sort to allow flexing and movement. This allows some degree of freedom but I still suggest that these must be handled with the utmost care.
While any cantilever should be treated with care, my experience is that sapphire/ruby are not particularly fragile. My Talisman Sapphire survived many years of heavy use without needing to exercise 'utmost' care (its still in one piece). I've been using my Denon 103R with a modded Soundsmith ruby cantilever for about 18 months - and that 'feels' quite robust too. On the other hand I've managed to snap a few boron cantilevers over the years. Although this is not solid data, I suspect boron cantilevers are more 'fragile' than ruby/sapphire. I think aluminium cantilevers are quite fragile too - they won't 'snap', but they will bend, after which they're ruined. YMMV.
you’ve answered a lagitiment question pertaining to this post, "is going through the repairing process," benificial? Pointing
out
a cavet’ that has to be pending, and you say "my experience is that sapphire/ruby are not particularly fragile". " I’ve been using my Denon 103R with a modded Soundsmith ruby cantilever for about 18 months - and that ’feels’ quite robust too". Spot on man. So now knowing that the Jem Cantilever repair isn’t impractially delicate, IS a load off, but you only answered part of your experience (how’s the sound)?#1: Is the Soundsmith ruby cantilever a sonic improvement over the factory stock Denon 103 cantilever?#2: Through your experience, do you recomend the Soundsmith route, or, if you had to do it again would you go with the factory exchange program?#3: Your make on: Sapphire cantilever vs Soundsmith ruby cantilever? Thx,appreciate it.
It's an availability thing and the pricing for boron rods forced change. Manufacturers moved to as ex. sapphire and other gemstones for cost primarily but availability is also a major issue. This is a quote right on Ortofon's site acknowledging the change a while back.
"Over the decades, there has been an increase in the use of Boron. Elemental Boron is mostly used in high tech applications. One of Boron's benefits for our modern technology is its use in neodymium magnets, which are an alloy of neodymium, iron and boron. Boron has also been applied in manufacturing of phono cartridges: Boron cantilevers are strong, stiff, light and 100% inert. From all possible options Boron cantilever is the best, but unfortunately extremely difficult to obtain."
They do acknowledge Boron is a better choice , something I always felt showed in the sound characteristics.
Not sure if it is Shelter or Zyx - but one of the highest models choose an aluminium cantilever over a boron one on the basis that given the other design parameters it is the better material. I don't think that it's as simple as just one item alone.
Some amazing cartridges with Aluminum cantilevers are the Miyabi, Fidelity-Research, Miyajima. That was the choice of the designers based of sound quality.
Some other cartridges are amazing with Hollow Pipe Boron or Boron Rod, Beryllium, Ruby, Titanium or even Ceramic (the most exotic) cantilevers.
I've owned good looking cartridges with Sapphire cantilevers and some of them are absolutely inferior compared to Beryllium or even Aluminum.
So the answer is not in cantilever material, but in overall design of the cartridge.
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.
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.
This is original ZYX Boron cantilever of the Airy III cartridge, picture taken on my macro lens. Look at the stylus. The stylus itself is not glued to the cantilever as you can see. The cantilever material is solid Boron φ 0.30mm - this is what stated in the manual. Micro-Ridge Solid Diamond (0.07mm) goes throught the cantilever’s collar, this thicker part of the cantilever also black (like boron itself) @nandric @lewm
I know only one company what was able to mount their nude diamond through the boron pipe cantilever using laser etched techniques. It was Matsushita back in the ’70s. But ZYX cantilever is Boron Rod, maybe the collar on Airy’s cantilever is Boron Pipe? The collar is black and does not looks like aluminum.
If anyone can post some other stylus/cantilever combo like that please do it, to my knowledge ZYX has its unique cantilevers. This is why Nakatsuka-San never offering a factory re-tip for any of his cartridges, they can only exchange an old cart to a brand new cart with new serial number.
Do not expect that any third-party vendor can offer something like that, their method is completely different, so anyone who will retip ZYX with some third-party vendor will lose its magic!
Nandric: You have my deepest sympathies; the magic is gone and your life may never be the same ;)
I am curious: do you have any comments as to how your Zyx sounds with Axel's boron/shibata compared to the original Zyx cantilever/stylus?
Now I am no expert as Chakster so clearly pointed out in another thread but my understanding is that some glue is probably used even in situations where the stylus is mounted and attached literally through a hole in the cantilever. It is just that there is less glue in this situation. Most common with aluminum cantilevers as I believe has been pointed out, but also in use on sapphire cantilevers. Seems not to be the case with boron.
The Zyxillion dollar question with respect to the Airy 3 is whether the stylus is even mounted into boron. It's almost certain that Zyx's .3 mm boron rod measurement refers specifically to the smaller section of the cantilever closest to the cartridge body. The .3 mm boron rod is pretty standard Namiki fare (I have a couple here with spec sheets).
It would certainly appear that this is a "telescoped" cantilever with the section in which the stylus is mounted clearly larger in diameter than the rest of the cantilever and quite possibly made from a different material and then attached to the boron rod. This, in and of itself, is not really contradictory to anything that Zyx states in its marketing literature.
I'm also curious, Lew, if your Universe uses this type of cantilever/stylus or something more traditional? Should be pretty easily visible. A friend of mine just mounted a Universe in the past month or two; couldn't make it out of town to visit him in the past few weeks and may have to wait until Spring to check it out-if he still has it by then LOL. He is a bit of a vinyl fetishist! But you would think if this kind of method was the be all/end all the Universe models would be using it.
With respect to the two different mounting techniques, they obviously each have their proponents. Less glue clearly in the so called "pressure fit" through the cantilever technique but I have read that on the other side of the coin the "more glue on solid cantilever" focuses on the idea that butting the end of the stylus up against the solid cantilever and then essentially adding the glue like a welding fillet around the stylus results in more structural integrity.
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.
my understanding is that some glue is probably used even in situations where the stylus is mounted and attached literally through a hole in the cantilever
Right, i will add pictures for you to compare retipped (glued) diamonds to the original diamonds on some exotic and conventional cantilevers.
You will not see as much amount of glue as you can see on re-tipped carts:
1) Retipped stylus by SoundSmith (picture from another user)
2) Technics 205c mk4 Retipped by Axel (this and the rest of the pics below taken by me)
Simply compare to the originals (almost no glue):
3) Technics 205c mk4 Original laser etched hollow pipe boron cantilever with nude Elliptical diamond.
You are completely missing my point which in this thread is much less about retips in general and more about the two different stylus mounting techniques. You obviously feel the through mount is superior; I am not absolutely convinced.
And lets be clear, with respect to retipping (perhaps we are into semantics here), it's very possible to have a retipper/rebuilder replace the entire cantilever assembly with one that has the stylus through mounted. It can be done with cheap eliptical styli on aluminum cantilevers and line contact or microridge styli on sapphire cantilevers. Those styli will show/have no more glue than your beloved Zyx.
It's simply a matter of changing the entire cantilever instead of just the diamond.
But I get it: you don't like retips/rebuilds and I'm sure that you would not like the idea of removing/cutting an older cantilever and grafting a new one on, even with a through mount stylus probably.
Which would be ironic, though, in light of the strong possibility that in principle your Zyx might essentially be doing the same thing right from the get go.
With respect to cantilever material though (the original topic here) I've come to the conclusion that my preference is boron. I am generally not a big fan of aluminum and I find boron to be a little bit more neutral/relaxed/less forced sounding and kind of mid hall in presentation compared to ruby or sapphire which I find to be a bit more up front in terms of presentation. As a generalization, I also think that boron is more forgiving of surface noise and quieter in the groove than other cantilever materials with the exception of beryllium.
The only cartridge I owned with a beryllium cantilever though was a Shure V15 Type VMR many years ago. Very smooth and very quiet in the groove, but I also found it very boring.
Preferring boron means that, unless I want to spring for the magical Zyx ;), I'm pretty likely to be stuck with the more glue around the stylus option, regardless of whether I retip or buy new.
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