Should I buy a VDH Colibri or Black Beauty?

From my experiences (I've owned or used 5 vDh cartridges - a Grasshopper, a Black Beauty and 3 Colibris), I can tell you Audiofeil is right on the money. My Grasshopper and Black Beauty were great (it may be that I had them back in 2001-2003 when quality control was better).

The three Colibris I had afterwards completely turned me off the van Den hul line forever. I had the same experience with them - they were either defective from the get go or they had crooked cantilevers (seen with a naked eye no doubt) and/or they had the worst tracking I've ever experienced. These Colibris were from a different distributor than the one Audiofeil mentions.

IMHO, this is sad because it appears to me that either these VDH "distributors" were selling defective units (maybe B-stock or seconds) or the quality control at VDH is horrible.

As Audiofeil said, when you get a good one and set it up right, they can be breathtaking. The problem is, I don't have the patience or disposable income (or, at the rate these things come defective, enough days on earth) to screw around and try to go through the frogs (no pun intended) to get to the princes.

Lutenist and Lewm,

Lewm, I too am a bit disappointed when someone doesn't respond to the original poster's actual question and certainly that wasn't my intention. Let me explain a few things further and maybe this will help Lutenist.

First, I am that dreaded life form, a reviewer, so I choose, for reasons that aren't important here, not to list my system on Audiogon. That said, I had my BB mounted a VPI TNT V with a JMW 12 arm at that time. The BB was, as has been pointed out, an overall fine performer. On that table, it had great speed and resolution and yet was still balanced with excellent midrange and bass extension.

My first Colibri was mounted on my current SME 30 (with an SME IV.vi arm) and the table is on the massive and overbuilt Silent Running Audio CRAZ Rack which sits on a concrete slab (I mention this for the tracking description below). I've set up many cartridges and I set this one up using a full compliment of Wally tools custom made for the arm and using his Analog Shop. On certain LPs the Colibri was breathtaking. I doubt you'll find a faster cartridge on the planet. Yet as good as it was at times, it also diappointed even more because it was sibilant on many LPs and a HORRIBLE tracker! Since VDH's usually track at very low VTF's I tried every adjustment I could all to no avail.

I sent it back to the distributor who claimed it was defective and he allegedly sent me a new one. Same result. Then, I tried another one and this one was the same.

You can blame it my table or my set-up, but you you'd be hard pressed to explain why I haven't had any tracking or sibilance problems with any other cartridges - and this includes a Grasshopper, a Lyra Titan and my current Dynavector XV-1s.

Sure, I have no doubt that others have had no problems with a Colbri due to the differences Raul points out. However, if I am about to spend that much money on a cartridge, I'd hope others who have had issues or encountered tracking or sibilance problems would at least let me know. Then, I can make my own decision based on all of the information gathered and the apparent credibility of the sources.

Finally, I WISH I didn't have this bad experience with the VDH Colibri as I liked the Grasshopper and BB so much when I had them. Unfortunately, I either had horrible luck with my 3 Colibris or it is just a very finicky performer.

Lewm, here's hoping you have great luck with your Colibri. I agree that my tonearm's effective mass may have contributed to the sibilance but was not the root cause. I tried adjusting everything with it, VTF, VTA, antiskate, damping, loading, you name it. When it was tracking well, it sounded exactly like Rudy and others have described it - amazing, breathtaking, incredible etc. Like Rudy and Jsadurni point out though, I wouldn't want it for my only cartridge as my XV-1s gives me more overall good sound on many more LPs.

Unfortunately, I guess I must NOT be a "connoisseur" as I do not have the ability to mount more than one tonearm on my SME 30. I'd love to have the ability to have say a TW Acustic with three tonearms or, better yet, a Rockport Sirius V. However, with the economy the way it is and my 410(k) now reduced to a 101(k), I'm lucky I don't have a Mattell "Close & Play" (crap, I think I just dated myself)!

Lewm,

It's hard at times to post on A-Gon and be thorough yet brief or concise enough to keep a reader involved. I should have been more specific and mentioned that the sibilance problem (which both Raul and Rudy have addressed) was separate and distinct from the mistracking that I experienced. Could the mistracking have caused the sibilance? Possibly, but I don't think so as the Colibri is so fast and transients so razor sharp that some sibilance is a probably just a by-product of that characteristic.

My Colibri(s) actually mistracked badly. What shocked me about this was that my Grasshopper and BB were excellent trackers notwithstanding the very low recommended VTF of the van Den Hul designs. I ran the Colbris up and down the VTF scale from .6 gms all the way to 2.6 gms in .02 gm increments all to no avail. I guess it's also possible that the cartridges the distributor sent me were never actually adjusted by VDH or were not actual replacements. Maybe the distributor simply kept sending me the same defective cartridge I originally bought. Either way, I ran out of patience (this took over a year to conclude) and went to the XV-1s and never looked back.