My new Soundsmith Straingauge cartridge

Lewm, I see you're a convert to rim drive/direct drive. I myself have moved to direct rim drive w/an equally leading edge air bearing linear tracker. The fast, transparent, essentially neutral SG cart has an amazing synergy, and I've been happy to put away my phono, don't class this as a disadvantage at all. Tbh the carts I was looking at in comparison would have cost me well in excess of the SG entry ticket. And I'm really happy that at the point I need to attend to stylus wear, I'll be shelling out only $400-$600, rather than $3000 on a retip. The SG has replaced a previous SOTA Transfiguration Orpheus into the Tom Evans Groove Plus SRX, no slouch itself.

I have tried to read everything available on the internet about Peter's SG cartridge and am very close to buying one because of their obvious design advantages.

I just have one simple question that I can't get answered.

I understand that a strict adherence to RIAA is not critical to SQ (i.e., +/- .1db is marginally audible and probably over-kill).

I understand the speed, coherence, sound staging,(et. al.) of the SG is well worth a mild response variance from RIAA. Peter has publically disclosed this variance as +/-1db between 50hz and 14khz.

What I don't understand is why there is no disclosure about the magnitude of roll off from 50hz down to 20hz and the magnitude of upward tilt from 14kz up to 20kz both of which are in the audible range and generally not disputed?

I understand that a displacement sensitive design will not require any where near the equalization of a velocity sensitive design and will thereby stay fairly close to flat with no phono-stage equalization; but on the ends of the sonic spectrum Peter admits the tolerance exceeds +/-1db but refuses to quantify this variance. He seems to prefer to simply tell us it doesn't matter. Peter is beyond brilliant, but I just don't get this approach.

This technology is phenomenal and the RIAA variance has spooked many an audiophiles unnecessarily only because it diverges slightly from what is considered the norm. In turn, many technocrats in the industry cant get their perfectionist heads around what they perceive to be a deficiency.

The best speakers in the world have several dB humps and troughs at their cross-over points that are measured and then viewed as "character" by the audiophile community. (Think if an archaic manufacturing practice led to a strict linear response definition at the expense of speed, coherence, sound staging and so on in the speaker market. Seems pretty silly right?)

I don't get why Peter doesn't simply quote variation for the entire audible frequency response range, own it for what it is, take away the big mystery, and rule the world.

My experience has been that some LPs that sounded terrible with my previous Airy 3 sound fantastic with the SG and vice versa. Most LPs sound fantastic, especially mono LPs

Spirit, I would say that I am a convert away from belt-drive and that my personal experience with my Lenco is very favorable indeed. I love it. Apart from the Lenco, all my other (four) turntables are direct-drive. I confess I do have some doubts/questions about rim-drive, as it is implemented in your type of tt, using an external motor with a small diameter drive wheel that makes contact with the platter via O-rings. I would never say that that is not a good idea, but I would want to audition it for myself to see how it compares to what I've gotten used to. (I think the Trans-fi set-up is superior to the rim-drive of TT Weights and VPI, however.) As you know, on the Trans-fi Terminator, I am a big fan, from afar so far. It would be my choice among SL tonearms, if I were willing to put up with pumps and such.

Cfluxa, why would you say that the SG is "solid-statey"? It depends upon mechanical energy induced into the mechanism via a stylus. To me, that's analogue. Maybe you refer to the SG power supplies?

Lew - I am referring simply to the fact that the strain gauge is using solid-state amplification rather than tube amplification. Of course, that doesn't get in the way of it being analogue.

An interesting line from Peter in a 2010 Audio Asylum post:

"While there is now some interest again in this technology, there are those who will DIY with older cartridges, and even now some with triode designs. I have opted to produce solid state circuitry for the SG simply becaue it allows fast, ultra linear performance. While I am not a tube bigot, I must point out that non-linearities from such are artifacts, and that is not the way I wanted to start out with my new cartridge. Not that artifacts are "bad"....but they are artifacts none the less. I have seen no distortion figures posted for these circuits; nor a square wave response into a typical load. I hope to see some real techincal work in this area someday beyond just tube circuitry for the sake of tube circuitry."

As I stated before, my main concern is that the sound of the SG might retain some solid-state characteristics that don't go over well with me. Based on what I'm reading from Spirit and others, it does seem that worries about bleached tonal colors, less-than-silky transients and a lack of dimensionality are hopefully misplaced.

I still do wonder, however, whether there's a bias away from rich tonal colors, and whether, for example, I might feel the need to replace my Yamamoto 45 amp with a 300B after dropping in the strain gauge, a bid to get that extra iota of second-order harmonic development that might be lacking. I'm not a fanatic about the latter, mind you, but I do prefer Technicolor to black-and-white.