Cartridge Loading and Compliance Laws


After reading into various threads concerning cartridge/arm compatibility, then gathering information from various cartridge manufacturers I am left feeling confused with head spinning a bit.... Ok, cart compliance I get, arm and total mass I get, arm/cart compatibility and the whole 8-12 Hz ideal res. freq. range I get. But why on earth then do some phono cartridge mfgs claim their carts are ok to use with med. mass common modern arms when they are in the highish 20-35cu compliance range? Am I missing something??

Ie. Soundsmith, VanDenHul, Ortofon and who knows, maybe more??

From what I gather, below 8Hz is bad and above 12Hz is bad. If one is less ideal than the other, which is worse I wonder, too low res. freq. or too high?
jeremy72

Showing 1 response by ptmconsulting

Those Mapleshade weights may indeed damp resonances but the overall mass of the tonearm combo now might be a bit much for those microscopic movements of a tiny needle in a groove. And you have to "bond" that weight to your headshell - meaning it is destroyed if you don't like it after all.

They way the show it configured the heavy weights are at the ends of the forward and back ends of the arm. Typically you want to have heavy weight closest to the pivot point so up and down movements of the arm are more easily made by that fragile cantilever and stylus.

I'll wait until someone here reports on it.