Soundsmith Straingauge SG-200 cartridge system

If you've enjoyed the harmonic depth, complexity and subtlety of cartridges like the Transfiguration Orpheus, you'll find the Strain Gauge a very different experience. I second Stringreen's advice, listen to one before committing.

Doug, I get the impression you don't think the Straingauge will be as 'fleshed out' as the Orpheus, and yet Arran states it isn't tonally thin in any way.

Arran didn't state that he's heard the Orpheus. There's no basis for comparing his comment to mine.

FWIW, I've set up and heard the Orpheus, the Ortofon A90, Dynavector XV-1S, ZYX UNIverse and Atmos, Benz LP, Lyra Olympos and other top LOMCs in my own system and in others. Any of them is more harmonically complete than the SG.

So is a low cost MM that Raul recommended which I still have lying about. Remarkably good for < $200, though Raul engages in a spot of hyperbole when he claims it rivals the best LOMC's. It's good but it's not that good, but at ~5% of the cost there's no disputing its value. Horses for courses...

Still, if you hear better dynamics and timing from a modded Denon than from the Orpheus then (as Dan_Ed suggested) our sonic priorities and sensitivities must be very different. The SG may well float your boat. Give it a listen and decide for yourself. Each of us is deaf in our own, unique ways. ;-)

I've never heard a Decca London Ref, sorry.

The original SG I heard (at RMAF a few years ago) had oodles of dynamics, a full frequency range, speed, weight, heft, etc. Everything it did it did well and nothing was distorted. However, it lost or severely attenuated the complex harmonics we're used to hearing on two familiar Vivaldi and Handel LP's. FWIW, we hear similar behavior from most SS phono stages and amps. Even the best ones we've heard (like Raul's original Essential phono/line stage) lose the lowest levels of musical harmonics. They simply fall below the sound floor of the component and are not retrieved.

People who listen to rock or other amplified/electronically manipulated music might not notice or care. We listen almost entirely to classical, with a heavy emphasis on original/early instrument recordings. Reproducing harmonic complexities with completeness and accuracy is essential to reproducing the actual sound of such music.

My resident physics/materials science genius predicted harmonic attenuation before we ever heard the SG. According to him it's virtually inevitable due to the the nature of strain gauges (don't ask me to explain the science, I'd make a fool of myself).

***
Lew,

We haven't heard an Astatic. I'll have to dig around the pile to remind myself what that MM is. I do remember that Paul and I both said that no sub-$2K LOMC that we've heard outplayed it in any significant way. A steal at 1/10 the price (whatever it is, lol).

OTOH, the MI we auditioned a couple years ago was unlistenable (to us). Paul instantly stood up and left the room, a familiar sign that something was seriously flawed and paining his hyper-sensitivity. I struggled along for a couple of LPs, tweaking this and that. I gave up once I realized that what I was trying to fix (a phase-shifted echo or ghost of each waveform) was inherent and unfixable.

It took me 30 minutes to figure that out. It took Paul 30 seconds. That's a fair estimate of the proportion between our hearing and our IQ's. ;)

Paul knew nothing about this cartridge except what he heard, not even the name. At dinner he asked, "What kind of cartridge was that? It must employ a different technology than MM or MC to behave like that. Does it work by induction or something?"

He scares me sometimes.

Thanks, Raul. Our ears/priorities certainly do differ in some ways, always have, but we seem to have reached similar conclusions about the Strain Gauge (I assume you meant SG, not SS?). You may be perfectly right that it displays other behaviors besides harmonic attenuation, behaviors which bother your ears more than mine.

All one can advise anyone is what you and I have both said, listen for yourself and decide.

P.S. With regard to whether it was the 2nd, 3rd, 4th or nth order harmonics which went missing, my recollection (several years old now) is that basically they ALL went missing. If some were attenuated more than others my ears aren't good enough say.

I do know it was much harder to distinguish between (say) an 18th C. oboe and a 20th C. one. The difference between those two instruments is vast when heard live, and quite clear with all those LOMC's too. The SG lost a lot of the distinctions.

...the comments about lack of harmonics implies technical inaccuracy in so far as tracing what is in the groove.

That cannot be inferred from my comments and it's demonstrably untrue: a cartridge is involved in more than just groove-tracing. Distortions and information loss occur everywhere in the signal path. For example, the strain gauge itself affects the signal (as do the armatures in magnetic cartridges of course). All non-linearities impact signal accuracy - even if the stylus has traced the groove perfectly.

I've no idea what listening biases some equipment reviewer may have but they're of no relevance to me. It's true that audio memories are long and ours are indeed biased - but our biases do not arise from listening to stereo equipment. That's a game for audio hobbyists, not music lovers. Our biases arise from four decades of intent, active listening to live, unamplified instruments and vocals at thousands of performances, in venues large and intimate, here and abroad.

Every stereo we've heard, including our own, falls miserably short of reproducing such music accurately. The SG (the one time we heard it) happened to fall short in the ways I described. Other components fall short in other ways. Each component must be auditioned by a potential buyer to determine whether he/she can tolerate, accept or perhaps even enjoy its particular shortcomings.

Perfect reproduction does not exist, never will. But criticisms from those with good ears and good intentions may be opportunities to improve if taken in the spirit offered. We have found it so, for our system...