Woot! Decca cartridge bargain

Hi Nandric. Yeah... My naming nomenclature was confusing. it’s a Decca Super Gold with a Paratrace stylus fitted by John Wright. I believe the Paratrace is fitted to the London Reference. It’s a major improvement to the original VdH that was on it.

Paratrace is the closest profile to Stereohedron patented by Stanton and manufactured by Extert Stylus in the UK back in the day (correct me if i'm wrong). Every Stanton owner should know that Expert Stylus is the company specializing in refurbishing Stanton/Pickering cartridges today. Never tried Paratrace myself, but i can trust Nandric. What i know for sure is that Stereohedron is superb, but not available any longer!    

So I lowered the back of the 12" arm about 6mm in 1mm steps and the sound snapped into focus improving the aforementioned dynamics by an order of magnitude. This thing is growing on me.

The Garrott brothers' improvements to the old Deccas are legendary. I tried a couple of times to talk Ken Kessler (Hi-Fi News & Record Review, author of books on QUAD and McIntosh), a big fan, to sell me one of his. To no avail!

Garrott Brothers own P77 MM cartridge is also superb

What i know for sure is that Stereohedron is superb

Hear Hear! I have one (Stanton D881S). I came by it while helping a friend. He wanted me to service his Thorens 124, so I did. It had the Stanton. He said it was crap and throw it out; I’d never heard of it (this was many many years ago) but was curious: every unknown cartridge deserves a chance. The stylus was encrusted with black hard crud, I wasn’t even sure there was a stone under it. No solvent, no brush or machine made a dent in that crust. I had to use a scalpel blade — with extreme care — and finally carved it all away. The stone was there, bright and gleaming. Under a 60X scope, it looked good too: sharp tip, clean lines, like new (though I know more X is needed to really see wear). After all that work, I hoped it was at least decent, and with some trepidation I played a record...

IT

BLEW

MY

MIND

@bimasta haha, nice, you can't go wrong with Doug Sax's disc mastering monitoring cartridge. 

I sent it to John Wright in the UK for a check-up a few months ago. He said it was unused. So an almost NOS Garrott Export with a line contact stylus. Sweet.

The original Garrott rebuilds used a Weinz Parabolic styles profile, as opposed to the Paratrace. I still have mine stating this on the original paperwork from the long departed brothers. Here's a review from my old boss Ken Kessler - we worked together at Canterbury Hi-Fi in the UK before he went full time into journalism.

https://www.kenkessler.com/hi-fi/garrott-decca-cartridge/

@topoxforddoc To clarify. The Grey may have the WP stylus. JW just said it was a type of line contact.
The Paratrace is on my SG/Decapod.
I also picked up a JW refurbished Garrott Bros Gold Microscanner which is superb. Almost as good as the SG sound but with no vinyl noise and a slightly more nuetral flavor.

@topoxforddoc  Thanks for the Iink. I met KK around 1987 at a show in London. We "argued" as to why he seemed to prefer bassy sound with dull treble compared to my preference for clean, clear, teansparent, and detailed sound. I wasn't impressed.

@noromance Here’s a photo of the original worksheet dated 1981. Mine has had a fine line retip from JW since, but is otherwise as the Brothers left it in 1981.
https://i.vgy.me/2o0kE4.jpg

Thanks for sharing. A nice slice of history. I have some pics in Systems on my profile.