Universal headshell recommendations.....


I have been trying, with no luck, to purchase an Orsonics headshell. As an alternative, please suggest a good sounding after market headshell, Audio Technica, Micro Seiki, Sumiko. I have also seen that Ortofon has a new wood headshell available, which is a bit spendy, but looks promising. Any and all guidance is greatly appreciated.

Marty Kohn
Portland, OR
128x128viridian

Showing 2 responses by rauliruegas

Dear viridian: Perhaps the Orsonic headshell is inside the 3-4 worst headshells ever, resonant and non-damped one. If you like additional distortions then buy that Orsonic from chakster.

Audio Technica had very good headshells especially the vintage ones ( you always can find on ebay. ) that were builded from magnesium where some of them comes with a rubber top plate as a damper other that the magnesium damping characteristics. If I remember one of them is the MG-10 and MS-12 and the like.

Now, it does not matters which cartridge you own you have to have 2-3 different headshells with different build materials ( but a good self damped material. Not raw aluminum or steel. ) , different headshell weight and even different headshell shape and through a evaluation proccess decide in whixch headshell that cartridge performs with better quality. Here that evaluation proccess must be a proved proccess.

Regards and enjoy the music,
R.
Dear chakster: "  If you want to follow Raul don't forget about 350 different sets of led wires to try ... "

those led wires can do the difference inquality performance level in the overall frequency range. 
No, you don't need " 350 " sets but at least 3-4 different sets.

chakster, years ago  the Orsonic headshell motivated a dfriendly discussion trhough a thread and I remember that in those " old " times I already had first hand experiences to knew that that headshell is really a bad item to hold any cartridge.
Well, one Agoner send to me an email asking that for a wild I stopped to talk how worst the headshell was because he owned a pair  and wants to put on sale ( in Agon. ) because he falled down to the same conclusion: bad headshells. As I said, that was years ago and to me nothing changed about.

Regards and enjoy the music,
R.