Acespaceman
Active Member
A while back I posted a thread about modifiying the tangential arm/bushings for reduced slop in the mechanism. It was a successful project that showed a small, but noticeable improvement in the sound, and a very noticeable improvement in physical slop in the arm.
Being the turntable junkie I am, I quickly turned my attention to setting up a handful of other tables, and getting the most out of them while putting the Zero on the shelf... sort of forgotten about.
One of the problems with the Zeros that everyone mentions is the high mass of the tonearm. While reading some reviews on budget carts, I read some glowing reviews of the Shure M35X, and SC35C. Although these are primarily DJ type carts, they get great reviews by the HiFi folks who use them. As I understood it, they have low compliance styli, and that might just be the ticket for my Zero. The SC35C really grabbed my attention because of it 4-5 gram recommended tracking force... That's gotta be a stiff cantilever. What the heck, for $59, I picked both of those carts up, and loaded the SC into the Zero.
Wow! All I can say is that this is a great match. I had been running an M91ED before, and thinking about it now, that was probably a really poor choice for the Zero because of it's high compliance. It never sounded bad, but it never sounded as good as the same cart loaded into my Dual 1229. It always sounded a little more "blurry".
The SC35C's low compliance stylus on the other hand was just the ticket... Long story short, If you own a Garrard Zero.. I highly recommend the Shure SC35C. Probably any low compliance cart/stylus will be a great match for this table.
What's TOTALLY AWESOME is that the table sounds great, and it lives up to it's promise of eliminating, or dramaticaly reducing alignment distortion. I notice a significant reduction of inner groove distortion compared to my 1229, or any of my other traditional arm TTs for that matter. The Zero arm works, and damned if it doesn't work well!
The SC really tightended up the the sound of this table, VERY nice sounding. I'm not good at describing how things sound, but it just sounds 100% BETTER than it did with the M91ED.... which IMO is a great sounding cart... just not when it's bolted to the Zero arm.
I'm going to try the M35X with its slightly lower recommended vtf, and see how that goes... but not until I enjoy this SC a little bit more.
I'll try to do some critical listening, and do an A-B comparison between the two.
Just thought I'd share... I know there's some Zero owners out there who might find this useful.
Being the turntable junkie I am, I quickly turned my attention to setting up a handful of other tables, and getting the most out of them while putting the Zero on the shelf... sort of forgotten about.
One of the problems with the Zeros that everyone mentions is the high mass of the tonearm. While reading some reviews on budget carts, I read some glowing reviews of the Shure M35X, and SC35C. Although these are primarily DJ type carts, they get great reviews by the HiFi folks who use them. As I understood it, they have low compliance styli, and that might just be the ticket for my Zero. The SC35C really grabbed my attention because of it 4-5 gram recommended tracking force... That's gotta be a stiff cantilever. What the heck, for $59, I picked both of those carts up, and loaded the SC into the Zero.
Wow! All I can say is that this is a great match. I had been running an M91ED before, and thinking about it now, that was probably a really poor choice for the Zero because of it's high compliance. It never sounded bad, but it never sounded as good as the same cart loaded into my Dual 1229. It always sounded a little more "blurry".
The SC35C's low compliance stylus on the other hand was just the ticket... Long story short, If you own a Garrard Zero.. I highly recommend the Shure SC35C. Probably any low compliance cart/stylus will be a great match for this table.
What's TOTALLY AWESOME is that the table sounds great, and it lives up to it's promise of eliminating, or dramaticaly reducing alignment distortion. I notice a significant reduction of inner groove distortion compared to my 1229, or any of my other traditional arm TTs for that matter. The Zero arm works, and damned if it doesn't work well!
The SC really tightended up the the sound of this table, VERY nice sounding. I'm not good at describing how things sound, but it just sounds 100% BETTER than it did with the M91ED.... which IMO is a great sounding cart... just not when it's bolted to the Zero arm.
I'm going to try the M35X with its slightly lower recommended vtf, and see how that goes... but not until I enjoy this SC a little bit more.
I'll try to do some critical listening, and do an A-B comparison between the two.
Just thought I'd share... I know there's some Zero owners out there who might find this useful.