My new Soundsmith Straingauge cartridge

Spiritofmusic - very fascinated by your comments, and wondering whether you think Michael Fremer has a point with his critique of the midrange being harmonically underdeveloped, with a relatively "stingy" sustain to notes. He refers to a corresponding a tipped-up response that emphasizes, for example, the bow rosin and strings more than the wooden bodies of acoustic instruments? Is this something that you have experienced, and/or been able to address with proper setup?

Thanks, Spirit. So to be clear, the Red Wine unit can replace the standard PSU entirely, performing all of its functions?

Spiritofmusic - thanks for the response, extremely helpful. Indeed, I am fascinated by the strain gauge after stumbling on Jack Roberts' review just last week. I happen to have a setup very similar to the one he had previously - Shindo pre, low-watt SET driving Lowther-type speakers, and I am amazed at the notion that the strain gauge could soundly beat the Shindo Giscours with a Miyabi cartridge!

I have been weighing buying a first-rate low-impedance cartridge to match the Shindo and my Hashimoto SUT, and am now pretty much trying to decide between that and selling the Shindo to make a bet on the SG. Your testimony is now pushing me toward the latter. I wonder whether I would miss fiddling with different carts and switching them out, or would the SG be so good I wouldn't look back. It does seem there are a few documented cases of that now!

Given the importance of azimuth, is it so sensitive that you think it could become an issue with regular sweep arms, versus your linear tracker?

Spirit - to Lew's point, I was also wondering about the fact that the SG is essentially a solid-state device, and was wondering if you think there's anything detectably "solid-statey" about the sound? Being a tube-o-phile who generally isn't enchanted with even top-notch solid-state gear like ASR, that's one of my key concerns here. I do love Shindo and VAC, and am pretty impressed by these reviews that say the SG has beat components from both those manufacturers. I honestly can't imagine solid-state gear doing that.

Spirit - sorry for the dribbling, but one other question for you - what is your take on the charge that the SG is ruthlessly revealing of bad recordings, with the result that one gets corralled into mainly playing clean, high-quality pressings? Is this also something that's mitigated with proper setup?

Lew - I am referring simply to the fact that the strain gauge is using solid-state amplification rather than tube amplification. Of course, that doesn't get in the way of it being analogue.

An interesting line from Peter in a 2010 Audio Asylum post:

"While there is now some interest again in this technology, there are those who will DIY with older cartridges, and even now some with triode designs. I have opted to produce solid state circuitry for the SG simply becaue it allows fast, ultra linear performance. While I am not a tube bigot, I must point out that non-linearities from such are artifacts, and that is not the way I wanted to start out with my new cartridge. Not that artifacts are "bad"....but they are artifacts none the less. I have seen no distortion figures posted for these circuits; nor a square wave response into a typical load. I hope to see some real techincal work in this area someday beyond just tube circuitry for the sake of tube circuitry."

As I stated before, my main concern is that the sound of the SG might retain some solid-state characteristics that don't go over well with me. Based on what I'm reading from Spirit and others, it does seem that worries about bleached tonal colors, less-than-silky transients and a lack of dimensionality are hopefully misplaced.

I still do wonder, however, whether there's a bias away from rich tonal colors, and whether, for example, I might feel the need to replace my Yamamoto 45 amp with a 300B after dropping in the strain gauge, a bid to get that extra iota of second-order harmonic development that might be lacking. I'm not a fanatic about the latter, mind you, but I do prefer Technicolor to black-and-white.

Spirit - is the stock PSU that you replaced with the Red Wine now collecting dust? Is it not an option to buy the SG without a PSU?

Thanks Spirit - extremely helpful. Was wondering if you had also investigated other PSU options for the Energizer, such as Mojo Audio or Hynes?