Ortofon SPU Cartridges

They should to sound warm and romantic ("tubelike"). In case of my SPU 85 Anniversary I find the sound is not overly warm or romantic. It is rather neutral with great speed and bass. Tracking is not so good though... I wonder though why there are so many admirers of the Ortofon SPU line. The cartridges are heavy and tracking ability is poor (despite of the high VTF of >3.5-4.0!), so why do those people choose for the SPU?

Chris

The SPU sound is rare combination of warm,detail and musicality. If it tracks bad, you have bad arm for it....My SPU's (I have seven of these) are on Orotofn RMG309 or FR64 and all is good....

Wow. I see the VTF is really high. That seems counterintuitive. Any problems with vinyl wear runing that much weight?

Hi, if that would be the case, we would not have any vinyl from 60 ties left...all would be worn out on these "heavy" cartridges.....

I have two SPU's classic E and Royal and they are great for Vocal's, Small Jazz, small intimate band's ands similar.
I find both track very well (Ortofon AS-309S) buit they don't do rock n roll, electronic ect as well as current MC's.

Great 2nd cartridge.

I run a Royal N, which has the Replicant stylus but is without the headshell so can be used on a one piece arm. I use a Schröder Reference and the SPU replaced a Transfiguration Proteus, initially as a stopgap to satisfy my curiosity while I got the Proteus repaired. I had to add a bit of weight to the headshell but Schröder do a brass cartridge mounting plate to replace the standard one that adds 5g and this is enough to get the resonance in the right range. Tracking weight is 3g on the Royal N and I don’t have problems with mistracking. My initial impression was that there was more substance to the sound, this cartridge is on home ground with classical music giving a piano proper weight and a great sense of scale to orchestral music. To get it to play rock and roll convincingly took a bit of work and I found it was important not to overtighted the bolt attaching the cartridge mount to the headshell and also the grub screw that secures the counterweight but this may well be specific to the Schröder arm. When I say don’t overtighten I mean just barely enough to hold it in place. The actual cartridge bolts were done up using the Ortofon supplied tools which don’t allow more than about 3Ncm of torque. I also found that there was a very narrow adjustment of VTA and VTF where the music really came to life but whether that holds for other arms I don’t know, most used for the normal SPUs don’t seem to allow for such fine adjustment. I’m two year on the Royal N now  and not missing the Proteus, which is at least now with the retipper (Ana Mighty Sound in Paris).

Oh and if using a SUT pay attention to the cartridge impedance, not all SPUs are the same. The Royal want’s no more than a 1:20 but only has 0.2mV, that would be a bit quiet into my MM phonostage which has only 35dB of gain so I use an active MC stage with 64dB and no SUT, some of the other SPUs will take a 1:30 SUT quite happily.

For those of you who use SPUs, what tonearm(s) have you found that work? Please share all the tonearms you've used that can accept a heavy cartridge like the SPUs.

I've recently read in my owners manual for my Jelco 750L that, even with the optional heavy weight, the maximum weight it can handle is 22g. So, 8 - 10 grams below what an SPU weighs.

groovemaster2 tonearm

Stax UA70 & UA90 vintage 12" tonearms

Victor (Japan) UA7082 10-1/2" tonearm

Ortofon TA110 9" tonearm

These all have supplemental counterweights to handle the SPU. The Stax and Victor arms are 1970-1975 vintage and can still be found fairly routinely on eBay from Japan. Additionally, the Thomas Schick 12" is currently produced, has outstanding bearings, and is an ideal match to the SPU line. I use all of these. One more I don’t have but is equally excellent is the Ortofon TA-210, the broadcast-length version of the TA-110.

Phil