Here is something to ponder on the subject: I have some 1980 vintage stuff from Til Tuesday. Although the music is very well recorded and full of strong dynamic range, the female vocalist has always had a very harsh sibilance to my ears. In fact I could only listen to a few cuts and I had to drop the volume at certain sections of the singing.
I have not changed out any cartridges to experiment with differences, I am still using my old favorite, the Audio Technica AT20ss and now with a new old stock stylus installed (about 150 hours on it at this point). Nothing seems to knock down the harshness. UNTIL, I installed a new Musical Surroundings Nova III to replace my Gold Note PH10 about two weeks ago. I only have around 15 hours use on the Nova III at this point, however I have done a lot of experimenting with the loading and I wanted to try what I was told on another thread makes a huge difference on MM carts and that is using an input impedance value of 100K ohms. The PH10 doesn’t offer this load, only the ’standard’ 47K. When I switched over to 100K ohms, I was blown away by how much smoother, detailed and open air the mid to upper range was. In fact most of the harsh sibilance was gone. The vocals which were always bothering me seemed to be rather pleasant now. I put on another 80’s recording from Duran Duran, a 12 inch 33rpm single of "The Reflex" which has extraordinary low end, but again the vocals drove me nuts with sibilance. I noticed the exact same improvement, it was pleasant to hear now.
Finally I have the right mix of settings which seemed to have solved a decades old issue for me. A simple change of input loading to 100K with capacitance settings of either 100 pf or 200 pf, depending on how much low end you want.
Just for specification as per the post above me, I am using a VPI Ares3 TT with a SME Series IV tonearm, audio cables which are nothing fancy, but custom made from the guy up in Toronto, ground to the chassis of the Nova III, no ground to earth from the chassis (I used to have one connected, but I developed a sudden ground loop and removing the earth ground solved it). Cartridge as noted is the AT20ss MM which is lower output for MM at 2.7mv. Gain on the Nova III is set at 52db after initially running 50db.
I have not changed out any cartridges to experiment with differences, I am still using my old favorite, the Audio Technica AT20ss and now with a new old stock stylus installed (about 150 hours on it at this point). Nothing seems to knock down the harshness. UNTIL, I installed a new Musical Surroundings Nova III to replace my Gold Note PH10 about two weeks ago. I only have around 15 hours use on the Nova III at this point, however I have done a lot of experimenting with the loading and I wanted to try what I was told on another thread makes a huge difference on MM carts and that is using an input impedance value of 100K ohms. The PH10 doesn’t offer this load, only the ’standard’ 47K. When I switched over to 100K ohms, I was blown away by how much smoother, detailed and open air the mid to upper range was. In fact most of the harsh sibilance was gone. The vocals which were always bothering me seemed to be rather pleasant now. I put on another 80’s recording from Duran Duran, a 12 inch 33rpm single of "The Reflex" which has extraordinary low end, but again the vocals drove me nuts with sibilance. I noticed the exact same improvement, it was pleasant to hear now.
Finally I have the right mix of settings which seemed to have solved a decades old issue for me. A simple change of input loading to 100K with capacitance settings of either 100 pf or 200 pf, depending on how much low end you want.
Just for specification as per the post above me, I am using a VPI Ares3 TT with a SME Series IV tonearm, audio cables which are nothing fancy, but custom made from the guy up in Toronto, ground to the chassis of the Nova III, no ground to earth from the chassis (I used to have one connected, but I developed a sudden ground loop and removing the earth ground solved it). Cartridge as noted is the AT20ss MM which is lower output for MM at 2.7mv. Gain on the Nova III is set at 52db after initially running 50db.