The damper, the tension wire and cantilever position

Dear Nandric, are we to understand your cantilevers become ’deviant’ while stored as a result of being neglected? Sure enough these little devils can seem to have a mind of their own, but this does ’stretch’ the imagination a teeny bit.

I’m only a reasonably well informed amateur and no expert like Dover, but my own ’experience’ (which definitely includes errors) seems to suggest that deviant cantilevers can be the result of two things: incorrect alignment of the cartridge forcing a straight cantilever in a skewed position or excessive anti skating pulling the arm outside and dislocating the cantilever. In both cases they need to be used.

I’m a bit of a cheapskate so I tend to buy previously owned cartridges, mainly directly from Japan. Sometimes they come with deviant cantilevers, in which case I have them checked by Kilian Bakker of holistic audio. If the deviation is minor this can usually be set straight as most cartridges have some manouvering space of the motor assembly to allow some minor realignment. But in some cases, like the Mutech and Transfiguration carts, the construction is very different and in these cases the tension wire has been bent out of shape. The only solution then is to have it ’factory’ rebuilt, if such still exists. The cheap and ’amateurish’ way to sort of correct this is to adjust the placement of the cart in the headshell to a position in which the cantilever ’looks’ straight on your alignment tool. This may look a bit weird, but it works without any obvious sonic penalty. Obviously this presupposes that the stylus is positioned correctly on the cantilever, which experts agree is not always the case. So I wouldn’t loose too much sleep over this.

Haha, I have over 30 of them, so I’ll be on the watch for their revenge. Thanks for the warning! I owned the Agate and still own a Lapis Lazuli (albeit refurbished by vdHul with boron cantilever). Both Kiseki carts have fairly long cantilevers and a relatively high compliance in relation to their body mass, so I would assume the record grooves will be able to force their cantilevers into a ’straight’ position without too much stress on the moving parts assembly. This would probably be more difficult with cartridges that have a much lower compliance. Do you experience the same behaviour with those as well?

I guess this is not the place to 'delve into' the reasons for the terrible mess sapiens  has got itself into, so I won't.

Your offer to hand over 30 of your cartridges for my LL is very tempting, but having over 30 is already exceeding the bounderies of sanity. Besides, I wouldn't want to have another 30 of them looking to get their revenge. My LL sample has an interesting history, but now with its boron cantilever it's nothing more than a Blackheart with a very fancy dress.....

Dear nandric, I recently had contact with Alessandro about another cartridge. He's a nice gentleman and certainly must be one of the biggest collectors out there.

To return to topic, most cartridges with skewed cantilever I've seen are bent to the left (with front view). This suggests that the arm was pulled outward with too much anti skating force. So I follow the advice of vdHul and others to use it sparingly. I have anti skating set at around 1 grams and tend to leave it there.

Again I ask you, do you also experience the behaviour of the cantilever being forced into the 'correct' position by the record groove with (very) low compliance? cartridges? 

And does this tell us anything about the pros and cons of cartridge compliance and how much of it is needed to get the best possible performance?

Dear Nandric, I know about those stories but as long as Van den Dungen remains silent we will never know the truth. It's not in my nature to serve both sides of an argument, but this might be an exception. Why?

Well, most Kiseki's (Blue, Purpleheart and Agate) were high impedance systems, which could point in the direction of Dynavector, whose systems were mostly high impedance. Probably because they used exceptionally thin coil wire, which required more turns. The Blackheart and Lapis on the other hand were low impedance systems (around 5 ohms), so different coil wire and possibly also magnets were adopted. The Kondo (then Audio Note) cartridges were also low impedance designs, so you could be right in believing that vdD asked his friend Kondo to built these top systems to his specifications. But this is pure speculation.

Dear nandric, I was indeed wrong about the Blue and Purpleheart, which were also low impedance designs. But in the case of the 'beauty' (Agate) my memory seems to be correct as several sources on the net confirm this was a 42 ohm impedance system. For the original Kiseki's there were two different motors, so it could still be the case that both Dynavector AND Kondo were involved in their design. At least it would explain the choice of SUT's for both low and high impedance systems.

Well, I never owned Blue nor Purpleheart, so apparently I didn't know what I didn't own. How does that qualify me? Probably as an ignorant poor man.....🤣

Meanwhile, where's Dover?