@milimetr
re the Phasemation - in that case the Phasemation is medium compliance - quite unusual for such a ow impedance MC.
It doesn't alter my view on the van den hul - I have sold and set up several over the years.
Here's van den hulls philosophy on arm mass & compliance -
71 Q: Is there a basic difference between cartridges with a lower compliance compared to a higher compliant units ?
A: Yes, there is. A higher compliant cartridge needs a lower tracking force. Something between 1.0 and 1.5 gramforce. A lower compliant cartridge works well starting from 1.5 till even 3.5 gram. Some rebuilds of original designs need this 3.5 gram; A tracking force that really can damage your grooves, especially where also an original spherical stylus is used. A higher compliant cartridge with a lower mass arm is my advice to keep your records in a good condition, even after many replays.
His recommended tracking force for the basic Frog is 1.35 -1.6g and recommended arm mass for the original Frog was 6-10gm effective mass. The Colibri range are worse for heavy arms due to the short cantilevers.
Here's some comments by van den hul on heavy arms -
A: It sounds like you bought a 12 inch Fidelity Research arm with probably even silver wiring inside. These arms were made for the, in those days, very famous cartridges of the same company, like the FR-1 and later FR-7.
These cartridges had a stiff suspension and worked with a tracking force of around 2.0 gram or even more. The compliance (flexibility) of the suspension was not very high. But with some extra coupled weight around (your heavy arm) the basic resonance frequency of cartridge and arm would be around 10 Hz.
Your actual cartridge has a much higher compliance and already tracks well at 1.35 - 1.50 gramf. So the heavy arm combined with the softer spring (the suspension’s steel wire and rubber together) resonates at a much lower frequency and at a higher amplitude - like 5 Hz. The sonic result is that a lot of extra energy of your power amplifier is used to move your woofer at around 5 Hz and the real bass is gone.
Lesson: Never match what is not made for each other. New arm designs are made for today’s cartridges with a dynamic compliance of 10 - 15 μm/mN. The other way around is also a fact of live: For instance your SME Series V will not work so well with the Fidelity Research FR-1 because the compliance of this cartridge is too low here. So the resonance frequency of the cartridge/arm combination (see Appendix 2) is too high and your bass reproduction is too strong. The whole acts as
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a low frequency resonator at around 25 - 30 Hz, so the output at these frequencies is also higher. But even worse is the fact that the tracking ability of your cartridge is gone. This because any resonating cartridge/arm combination already causes a healthy number of microns in excursion at the stylus. So what’s left is for your music. And in worst case that is not much.
So, sudden tracking problems are partly caused by uncontrolled low frequency resonances. A way to solve this problem is a reduction of the headshell mass. And also some fluid damping can help, but ONLY when you play flat records. Otherwise the cure causes your cartridge to age faster than you age yourself.
