anyone else running vintage Empire carts?

2 crop.jpg
Can't really tell if it's an 888 or 808. Probably the same body, but don't know for sure. This will be interesting.
 
Not the one I bought, if that's what you mean. Mine was listed as an AT because that's the box somebody stored it in. Alongside a Shure M32 and what looks like AT hardware and a couple of stylus covers.

As an aside, I ran a Google image search on wualta's pic above, with hilarious results. I can recommend it. Or maybe I'm just easily amused.
 
These days, ya gotta be amused easily; otherwise it's an uphill battle.
My photo is a crop from an auction photo for what was supposedly an Empire 2500 ZI (ie, Z-One), another 66 clone, but which turned out to be, probably, an 808, a model we don't often see.
Yours was disguised as an A-T, eh? Do you have a link to the auction, or some of the photos from it?
 
Item no. 263495107720 and here you go, cropped and enhanced.

s-l1600.jpg

Looks like the tip on the Shure stylus is already a goner and I have no hopes that the Empire will look any better once it gets here.

ETA: The obvious scenario here is that the previous owner wore out the Shure, replaced it with the Empire, replaced it with the AT, then put the old carts away in the new box. So I had to assume from the get-go that both styli would be worn.
 
Yes, it looks like an 888SE but I think, though the stylus is genuine Empire, It's not the correct S888SE-ERD. It looks like any number of 808 styli.

John
 
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The 888SE went through Empire's transmogrifier-- from the all-metal body with the teeny unlabeled streamline-moderne baby-blue stylus grip to the plastic-mount body with larger, Empire-branded arrow-shaped stylus grips. On top of that, I have photos of both deep navy blue arrow grips and one set from a 2014 auction showing a black grip but with the lettering picked out in metallic blue, like so:
$(7EC6~1crop.jpg
And that's what I see when I unleash the mighty power of CS3 PhotoSnort on the auction photos, which are awful even by eBay standards, but which yield murky clues:
19crop.jpg
So maaaybeee it's the real thing. We'll see.
 
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I oughta know better by now. The Empire literature for the 888SE claims that the S888SE-ERD is blue. So maybe bang4buck's stylus is the right one after all. The lettering does look a little bluish.

John
 

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Aaaand here I am down the rabbit hole that I knew this was going to be...

Pickupnaalden claims they have SE and VE originals in stock, actually. Bit above my pay grade, though.

Just for comparison, the Shure stylus is Pfanstiehl 756, I pull up TVOM and bang, there is exactly one choice but it's a good one. Original, .2x.7, tracks at 1 to 2 grams and costs $22.
 
Yeah, at the current exchange rate, the styli are ~$71 shipped and ~$102 shipped.

As for the Shure, as long as you know the M31E is Era II and was almost the cheapest Era II stylus they made, go ahead. But if you ask me (you didn't, fortunately for you!), I'd put that money toward a nice purple Empire 235-VDE. It will fit and work in the 888SE body and sound really good, as boreas can tell you.
A similar strategy can be used to go cheaper: get the 4236-ZDE, an aftermarket 1000ZE/X stylus. I have a couple of these that I bought in 2015, and they're really pretty darn good.

Back to the SE.. Nothing is certain until we get thing in our hands and, if the diamond is good, try it on a record. I'm hoping it's a genuine SE stylus, but like I said, we'll see.
 
And just to pass the time while my new cartridge is on its way to me like Schroedinger's cat (we don't know if it's alive or dead), here's what Google thinks is visually similar to an Empire 808 :rflmao:

Capture.JPG
 
Yes, the S999VE/X-ERD (235-VEX) is a beautiful stylus. I have mine fitted to a 1000ZE/X body but I don't know, as seems to be the implication above. that the 888SE is electrically close, or in fact the same electrically, as the 999VE/X or 1000ZE/X. Is that the case?

John
 
Pretty close. The 888SE and TE appear to use the same body, based on the few measurements that've been posted-- around 400mH, like my TE body-- which puts them right in between the 350mH and 550mH of the next-generation bodies. The next-generation styli fit the 888s but can rotate out of azimuth, so need to be tacked down.

I should point out that I've tried this myself, and I'm not the only one doing this, as evidenced by this web photo of a 999VE (same body as the 888 but higher inductance) with a 999VE/X stylus:
26 disguised as an 888.jpg
Rabbit hole indeed. I made the purple plastic bits of the 999VE black to make it look more 888ish.
 
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I haven't tried the 4235-SDE, though I have a Duotone 4235-VDE, which turned out to be the same as the 4236-ZDE.
I have tried some generic 232s, and they stank. Doesn't mean they all do, but I was put off by the ones I did try (including the [4]232-VDE). Preferable by far is the genuine 235-VDE.
 
. . . Can somebody please explain this? Thanks!

Some cartridges exhibit a rising frequency response. Loading just means to solder the proper capacitor across the 47k Ohm input resistor in your phono preamp.

If you start by finding the capacitance of your interconnects between your table and the preamp you subtract that number from what the cartridge mfg. suggest then you have what is required to bring the capacitance to the specified number.

If you put a pair of open wires onto the resistors you can tack in different sizes of capacitors till it sounds best to you.

After all, it is your stereo, you are the only one who needs to be happy with it
.
 
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