Yuour cartridge for Reed 3P "12 Cocobolo

Hello Sarcher, did you measured reconance frequency with those high compliance (25-30cu) cartridges and test LP ?

Seriously, it would be nice to hear some feedbacks from Reed users. Which cartridges well matched and which are not (based on your own experience).

Thanks Doug and Sarcher
I'll screw up my lower compliance ARGENT cartridge soon to check it against a bit higher compliance AT ART-2000.

As for the ZYX without Silver Base, Sarcher, yes i owned Airy-3 before and preffered 4D Premium with Silver Base over it. Sent my 4D for upgrade anyway, don't have it now to check with Reed (otherwice i would not post questions here).

Ninetynine, it looks nice. The shape of "headshell" on my reed is different, it's not removable from the armwand, probably earlier version, looks more like Da Vinci than current round shaped reed shell. That's interesting, i'll check for EMT.

Just swapped my Audio-Technica ART-2000 with vintage Argent MC500HS on Reed 3p and love the sound even better. It's something special about this very rare and almost unknown cartridge. I've been using Argent MC on Thomas Schick "12 and it was really good, but on Reed 3P it sounds much better. While the resonant frequency is a bit lover than ideal (AT ART2000 was ideal near 10Hz) i love the sound of high output Argent MC500HS. Maybe it's because of sapphire cantilever. Their stylus specify as Hyper Elliptical and on their paper sheet it's similar to Stereohydron / Fine Line / Line Contact / Long Line / Line Trace.

Anyone on here experienced with Argent top of the line cartridges ?

Cheers Marco
Hmm, i always thought Silver Base is an improvement (not just additional weight). My previous model of ZYX was Airy-3 without silver base. My next model was 4D Premium with Silver Base 2 (i don't have it now, shipped for service to Japan).

Marco, it's stated everywhere that ZYX distributors and Nakatsuka-San support only models with real serial numbers (no support for grey market products like those from ebay in hong kong). If you have cartridges from official ZYX distributors they can take care of it (in case of retip/service questions). ZYX retip policy is interesting, they do not retip old cartridge, they will supply brand new cartridge with new serial number to customers (if you old original is broken). So the cartridge with broken tip must be returned to ZYX in Japan for replacement. It's not cheap, but you pay less for new one - this is what they call retip. If you have no distributor in Italy you can contact Mehran @ SoraSound in USA (he's a top guy in business).

If you preffer retipping old cartridge then Sound Smith can do that for reasonable price, no problem. But it will be no longer ZYX home sound! And if some other vendor has touched original zyx you will no longer get Nakatsuka-san support.

I've had some distortion problems in the right channel with new gray market Airy in the beggining, later the problem dissapeared, maybe it was just burn-in period.

Preamp is very important for cartridges like ZYX, it was a big improvement to use ZYX CPP-1 Pre-Pre (instead of my existing MC stage) and MM stage.

Any happy owners of Miyajima (Kansui or Madake) on Reed 3p "12 could leave a comments? Accordind to updated spects on miyajima website: Compliance of both cartridges (10Hz) = 9×10-6cm/dyne. Miyajima-san said that Reed 3p arm would match the Kansui very well (this is what German distributor of Miyajima told me), but Mr.Vidmantas @Reed is not so optimistic regarding Kansui + Reed combo. Would be nice to read comments from the actual users (especially Madake).

And nother question is MM/MI cartridges of higher compliance on Reed 3P, i haven't tried yet, but in MM vs. MC thread i've seen some users of 10.5 Reed with MM cartridges (20-30cu). Anyone?