Cartridge types

[WhiskeyRebel]

I haven't had a phonograph since high school, when I had a hand-me-down Zenith phono / radio combo that was so old that its brochures bragged about the brilliant new innovation of stereo FM reception. Following this board is starting to give me the bug though. What I don't know is, in objective terms, what are the differences among phono cartridge types. I've been able to gather that ceramic pickups generate a stronger signal that requires fewer stages. I think that is what the Zenith had but remembering that its speakers were open backed swingout units with oval woofers and paper cone tweeters with no crossover as far as I know, I doubt I can blame the cartridge for the way it used to sound.

Do ceramic cartridges inherently overemphasize or miss certain frequency bands, or have inherent limitations in dynamic range? Do they tend to obscure low-amplitude details mixed into the grooves or are they fairly accurate?

My current familiarity with ceramic transducers is with piezo tweeters and piezo guitar pickups. Both have a rep for sounding grainy and harsh, but that may be more a consequence of their implementation than inherent to the technology. Which makes me wonder if it's the same on record players. It is a cost-cutting means so when you find that type of transducer, it is incorporated into a bunch of other cheap parts that each detract from the performance.

What I meant about implementation was that in tweeters the wafers sometimes are just pinched into cheap ringy plastic cups, and on guitars they are usually sitting under the saddle where the vibration pattern of the top can't be picked up.

 

[Ben]

I don't think that ceramic carts are really used anymore. Moving magnet carts can be picked up fairly cheaply if you're not too fussy, and don't need the super high ouput of a ceramic.
Someone please jump in and correct me if I don't know what the heck I'm talking about.

 

[Dan ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ]

"High Compliance" cartridges such as crystal and ceramics, track at much heavier forces than magnetics, and due to the stiffness in the cantelivers and generally poor quality of the styli, can literally EAT a record alive. Get a decent table, use a Shure or Grado cartridge and everything will be O-Tay!

 

[visitor]

Ceramic and crystal cartridges still exist but there is absolutely no comparison in quality against magnetic cartridges. As another poster pointed out most of them are just like playing your records with a knife.

If you want to start using a turntable and you are on a tight budget get a used Technics TT in good condition for about $20- $30 and a new cheap magnetic cartridge for about $30-$40.

Your records will last longer and the sound will be much better.

 

[merrylander]

The only 'ceramic' that ever tracked at low VTF was the Micro Acoustics and they are long out of business. I have a 282e at home but whem our son was a teen he brushed the dust off the stylus - in the wrong direction - so goodbye 282e.

Rob

 

[Dan ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ]

Re: "Micro Acoustics"
Hey, I had one of those that I used on my Dual belt-drive!
Nice little cartridge...had to retire it when the stylus became worn. Went back to the Ortofon that the Dual came with. Never did experiment much with cart's on that particular table. It seemed to favor low-mass varities as I recall.

 

[FreaK]

as has been said, peizo cartridges are basically out of production and unsupported. And from what i've read, it's a good thing too.

there are a couple other kinds of carts:

-moving magnet or MM- magnet is attached to the canteliever. Form the base of the great phono cartridge pyramid. cheap, common, and some are really good too.

-moving coil or MC- a coil attached to the canteliever moves through a magnetic gap in the body of the cart. Typically most expensive and most common among audiophiles. Probably the easiest way to great fidelity because a small coil is far lighter than any size magnet.

-decca- the canteleiver is vertical and held in tension against the flow of the groove by a sort of guy wire, dunno if it's a moving magnet, moving coil or variable reluctance(which brings me to the next type) only a couple companies have used this method, so they aren't terribly common. Great reputation through.

-varriable reluctance- basically the same as a MM but instead of a magnet per se, it uses a reluctor, not 100% sure here but i think it's a kind of semi conducting magnet. In any case this is what Grado uses. Great costerformance ratio, easy to get.

-force guage- rarer than decca cartridges they use a force guage which reads actual deflections while travelling along the groove rather than the speed at which it's deflected, as in any other type. Win Labs made them for a while and Sao Win, who ran the company, still supports them. there was also a model made by toshiba or panasonic or something. Apparently good sound and no need for a phono amp because the force guage needs a power supply just to function, so you can just plug it into the aux input. not cheap and hard to find.

 

[michael w]

Originally posted by CELT
"High Compliance" cartridges such as crystal and ceramics, track at much heavier forces than magnetics, and due to the stiffness in the cantelivers and generally poor quality of the styli, can literally EAT a record alive. Get a decent table, use a Shure or Grado cartridge and everything will be O-Tay!

Not so much the stiffness in the cantilever but in the supporting suspension.

Compliance and weight by themselves will not eat records.

Poor stylii and misalignment will though.

 

[danj]

There are certainly differences in ceramic (more properly "piezo") cartridges but one thing is certain -- they are almost always cheap and low-fi and designed to track at forces that are now generally considered to be excessive.

There are several types of cartridge generally considered "hi-fi." There is the "magnetic" and its variations moving iron and moving magnet. This is the most common type and ranges from merely adequate to spectacularly good.

There is the moving coil design which also has several variations but which are generally considered, arguably, to be the best sounding. These usually have very low output. They also tend to be higher priced than most magnetic designs.

(Actually a moving coil design also has magnets but the overall design is radically different from your typical magnetic cartridge.)

There are other designs that are less common. The older Decca cartridges discussed in another message AND the very high quality Piezo designs of MicroAcoustics. Both are very good quality but somewhat limited in appeal. The MicroAcoustics were famously good trackers -- the 2002e could out-track the Shure's top cartidge and do so at 1/4 gram less VTF! THe MicroAcoustics are long gone and the Deccas can only be gotten through special order. I used to use a 2002e and think it one of the best cartridges I ever used - but fragile!

 

[WhiskeyRebel]

Would this be a place to start?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3091955678

Just figured with it being in my neck of the woods, I could drive over and pick it up so's not to worry about shipping damage. So I just searched for stuff in the DET-MI area.

No idea who would have built these things for RS or if you can still get a cart or stylus for it. If anybody has the scoop on this thing please fill me in.

If this is known to be a pile of scrap, please let me know. If it is a decent piece, well....I know all's fair, but please don't snag this out from under me.

Also, does anybody know if this thing carries its own preamp or if I'd need to pick up a preamp to use this on a receiver that only has video, CD and tape inputs (no phono)

 

[Nat]

One of the earlier posts erred in describing ceramic/crystal/piezo cartridges as high compliance. With the exception of the Microacoustics and the Wins (strain gauge is actually just a variant of piezo) and possibly the Euphonics and Weathers (which I think are the ancestors of the Win) ceramic cartridges are mostly low compliance. Some of the 1960's Sonotones (Microacoustic's ancestor) had low tracking forces by the standards of the day, but by modern standards would be thought fairly high tracking forces.
Your average ceramic cartridge is pretty bad, but possibly that's simply a matter of cost -- from the manufacter's point of view, the advantage is that you can skip the preamplification stage (and some early ceramics could drive a high efficiency speaker with no amplification). The desire to skip preamplificaton is/was usually simply a matter of cost cutting, so as little as possible was spent on the cartridge (and turntable) involved, with the crappy results you might expect.
The Microacoustics and Wins were examples of the potential of the type when cheapness wasn't the main criterion. And they both required some circuitry to match the cartridge to regular phono inputs. In the case of the MA, the circuitry was integral to the cartridge body.)
In my opinion Microacoustics (which actually aimed for the mass market, unlike Win) might have done better if they hadn't been in business during the heyday of transistor equipment built solely for specifications and no attention to sound. Used with tube equipment or non bright solid state, they sound pretty good, but with mass market 70's solid state, they can be painfully bright. (This may have been what MA was aiming for, since their speakers were also bright)
I wonder if it might not make sense for someone to revive the brand, but without the circuitry, to allow use with the large number of amps that don't have phono inputs.

 

[visitor]

WhiskeyRebel,
That thing is not my cup of tea. There could be better linear type turntables but if you decide to buy that kind of turntable it is fair to warn you that most of them use P type cartridge mounting. Your choice of cartridges is going to be very limited compared to what you can get for a standard type of tonearm.

 

[Dwayne68]

In actuality there are good ceramic cartridges. At the Inception of High Fidelity and stereophonic sound they were the standard of the industry. As another poster had stated ceramic cartridges are of low compliance and don't perform very well with the most modern records because of the loud cut. Vertical Excursion on the Stylus is beyond most of their capability which causes the skip. I've experimented with various cartridges and many records for years and found this to be true. Another factor to consider is when the ceramic cartridge was King records were cut Very differently. It was an art form then. Close monitoring to volome levels and things such as that came into play because they knew the limitations of the device going to be playing the record. So compromises were made and therefore most records of that day where playable buy most anything that was on the market then. Not so now. Most of today's records are cut directly from digital sources such a CD right onto vinyl and what you're basically getting now is a direct copy a CD onto a vinyl disc and only the finest High compliance cartridges can track them cleanly without siblance Distortion or even skipping. Also to take into consideration is the fact that most players that sported ceramic cartridges in the day didn't have anti skating devices either and most were changers and that design has limitations of its own. The trade-off for automatic feature was the Simplicity and the crudeness of the arm design... bearings Etc for cost effectiveness.the Dual 1019 turntable was probably the first of its kind in the higher-end market that offered versatility of everything... automatic adjustable anti skating Etc. It was a marvel for its day and is still regarded as a very good automatic turntable even yet today. on another note to remember about the ceramic and Crystal cartridges of yesteryear was that they were matched for the unit that they were placed in.voltage output was closely matched to the amplifier as not to fry it as many of the earlier systems were vacuum tube and not transistor or solid state easily over driven if not burned out with voltage going too high... So they did their homework even in that day.. Too little... you suffer in the bass and there's a very thin sound...too much and you're over driving the amplifier to distortion. The best way to enjoy a unit of yesteryear is to play the records that were from the era of which it was designed within let's say a 10-year span. You're pretty safe at that point they won't skip and will sound as they should and how they were intended. Save your modern LPS for today's equipment and I do mean the higher-end stuff.. they can handle the way they are mastered. Most people aren't going to use a vintage unit as their main sound source anyway but merely as a device to take a trip down memory lane as I do here at my place. I could fuss fidget all day long on something that isn't going to be changeable.. and if it is I would only destroy the authenticity of the unit that I have. I just enjoy it for what it is and leave well enough alone.

 

[MRL_Audio]

^^^ zombie thread lives... might be close to the record at 16 years old! @Dwayne68 Interesting post though. Might get more eyes on it in a thread all it's own. Welcome to AK.

 

[ripblade]

↑ There's a renewed interest in direct sensing cartridges. It would be nice to see someone take up the MA patents and restart production, but for whatever reason that's not happening. In the meantime, I don't want to carve up my records with relics from the '50s, so the optical transducer - also direct sensing - is somewhat more interesting. Being relatively new, it deserves to be added to this thread.

 

[Wolfie62]

MA’s were not direct sensing carts, in that the stylus vibrations still had to pass up through the cantilever and then into the transducer (piezo/crystal/ceramic).

Variable Reluctance, or Magnetic Induction, Moving Iron, Induced Magnet, are MM carts; they have a Virtual Magnet instead of an actual magnet that vibrates near the coil poles. Virtual magnet, because it only has magnetic flux as long as it’s (soft iron) near the stationary magnet(s).

 

[cafe latte]

↑ There's a renewed interest in direct sensing cartridges. It would be nice to see someone take up the MA patents and restart production, but for whatever reason that's not happening. In the meantime, I don't want to carve up my records with relics from the '50s, so the optical transducer - also direct sensing - is somewhat more interesting. Being relatively new, it deserves to be added to this thread.

As wolfie said MA cart was not direct sensing but it was really nice. I recently bought a MA2002e with cantilever intact but diamond missing. I retipped it myself with a nude MR. It is a stunning cart, it tracks at 1g the worst torture track I have and has good separation. I dont find it hard edged at all, but it is very sensitive to groove noise if record is worn, but it is detailed more than accentuated. Mids and bass too are fab.
I am buying these odd cart for a reason as I am planning to revive something interesting. I have been winding coils and retipping. Carts are a bit of a passion and my strive to find something odd and lost to bring back has led me to the VR1000, strain gauge and the ma2002. Not sure which way I will go yet, but the ma2002 is really interesting, the vr1000 I have made another stylus for. I retipped original but torture track it will still leave the groove, my stylus wont so this is promising and lastly the strain gauge cars are a thought to build. I just want one project so watch this space so to speak..
Chris

 

[MRL_Audio]

@cafe latte - can you provide a list of direct sensing cartridges? Doesn't need to be a comprehensive but I am curious as to what else is out there that I may have missed. Thanks.

 

[ripblade]

Direct sensing is not the correct term, then. Most cartridges generate voltage dependant on stylus acceleration, meaning, when the movement stops, so does output. Crystal and ceramics, as well as the MA and the optical cartridge don't require movement to produce voltage, and can in fact, output DC. As such, output is proportional to stylus displacement, consequently a different type of equalization is needed. What is that type of generator called? Displacement generator?

Anyway, it would be nice to see the return of this type to the high fidelity market, especially an affordable one. Some my say the optical cartridge is affordable, but I mean more affordable lol.

 

[gusten]

Direct sensing is not the correct term, then. Most cartridges generate voltage dependant on stylus acceleration, meaning, when the movement stops, so does output. Crystal and ceramics, as well as the MA and the optical cartridge don't require movement to produce voltage, and can in fact, output DC. As such, output is proportional to stylus displacement, consequently a different type of equalization is needed. What is that type of generator called? Displacement generator?

Anyway, it would be nice to see the return of this type to the high fidelity market, especially an affordable one. Some my say the optical cartridge is affordable, but I mean more affordable lol.

Not acceleration, more velocity.