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anyone else running vintage Empire carts?

It's only a small nitpick:
There've been some very nicely done youtube videos recently claiming that before the 1971 1000 ZE/X family, Empire was still making moving-magnet cartridges. This is demonstrably not the case. Grab a pre-1971 stylus; point it straight up. Straighten a household staple or other fine steel wire, poke it gently upward into the brass tube until it stops. Let go and it will simply fall right back out, as it does in my ca. 1965 888 PE's stylus. The "magnetic cone" is mumetal, soft iron, permalloy: magnetic but not a magnet.

However, a moving-magnet stylus can be made to work in a variable-reluctance body, as Ortofon has done in my VMS 5E Mk II and OM 5E. As far as I know, Empire never did.
 
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wualta said:
Sad that tVOM's out of all the 235-SDE styli, but if you want one of the better bang/buck deals, try a yellow 235-D7. Your choice of brown or yellow. My yellow turned out to be diasa, while the brown I got later was regular ol' bonded, so go for the yellow and maybe you'll get something good sounding and fun to look at.

Has anyone tried the 235-DE, the green base elliptical?
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I have 2 of the green base elliptica 235-DE styli. The first one was the first needle I had ever gotten from Gary. It has that typical Empire punch to it, bold and brash, sounding good with hard-driven rock and similar music. It does have higher tip mass, so when tracking at 1.5 grams, it has great anti-skipping ability but can distort on high frequency, high energy passages (I often use the opening sequence of the first track on the Moody Blues' 1971 AGBDF album to test with). As I read the post about some examples of the yellow 235-D7 being nude, which I remember being discussed in these pages before, I went and looked at a few of the older NOS styli with one of those little 5-dollar jeweler's loupes you can get online. Turns out that one of my green 235DE styli is nude, one is bonded. Of the 2 green 232-DE ones I've got, both are nude. A recent blue Astatic 232-SDE is also nude. And a 230-DE for an 808E, while bonded with a big fat steel bushing, has a natural diamond bonded tip that doesn't look man-made like most bonded diamond tips do. It was an eye-opening and eye-fatiguing effort.
 
Just a harmless suggestion, but mistracking could-- could-- be an early sign of suspension hardening, so why not take, say, the bonded 235-DE and give it a rubber treatment with the technique/goo of your choice?
 
wualta said:
Just a harmless suggestion, but mistracking could-- could-- be an early sign of suspension hardening, so why not take, say, the bonded 235-DE and give it a rubber treatment with the technique/goo of your choice?
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I hadn't thought of that. I have been meaning to try the wd40 treatment on an old 232-SE stylus that sags to tighten it up. Maybe if I get to that, I could hit the 235-DE with something to loosen it up at the same time. Could also be that I'm tracking the 235-DEs a little too lightly. At 1.5 grams, they exhibit that anti-skipping ability that is helpful on records that skip. At 2 grams they lose that ability, so I guess I should look for distortion at that setting.
 
At 2g, maybe the 235-DEs run out of vertical deflection and smack into the boulder rather than flex over it. Dunno-- again, I'm lucky that I don't have any LPs that skip, so limited experience. But either way, if you can give a cantilever more freedom to move vertically both up and down, especially if that movement is damped properly by good rubber..

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888 SE with 232-SDE

You may have noticed that early cartridges tended to have bodies with flat bottoms and had cantilevers that didn't place the diamond very far below the body. As LPs got more warpy, this became a liability, so later cartridges tilted the body away from the LP surface and aimed the cantilever down at it. The 888s were old school and rode frighteningly low, but usually didn't come to grief, so don't do a WD-40 treatment on an 888 stylus unless it keeps scraping the LPs you want it to play.

The 888s I have tend to want to hug the record they're playing, so I carefully/gently move the cantilever up and down to see how much play there is. If the cantilever when off the record can't go any lower (ie, toward the LP) when gently pressed downward, it may be as good as it was designed to be. Nevertheless, if the plastic grip of a stylus often scrapes on the record at recommended VTF, a little WD-40 will firm up the suspension. The happier solution would be to swap in a 999/235 combo for those problem LPs. It's one of those perennial LP playback problems that sometimes takes stubborn persistence and experimentation. Let us know what ends up working (or not!) for you.
 
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wualta said:
If it's an 888, always! So watch that moue and never let it try to smooch your LPs.
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Interesting observation regarding the flat-bottomed bodies (cartridge bodies, of course). Some of the ones i have mounted (cartridge bodies again) are indeed parallel to the record surface while some have a very slight angle to keep them farther away from dangerous surface contact. Haven't had any issue with any of them riding over warps, but it's always been a concern. So it's certainly a valid point and far from being moot (or moue-t or moo-ed, whatever).
 
Not to bang on about it, but when using old flat-bottom cartridges with compliant vinyl-hugging suspensions combined with medium-mass arms like the one on the Technics SL-1200 Mk 2 (or my SL-1700 Mk 2), adding motion damping to the arm will help avoid collisions.
 
Have any of you 4000D/III body owners used either or all of the Tonar 668-DE elliptical (Da Capo Audio), the VividLine (from LPGear) and/or the JICO 241-04D/III Shibata stylus (again from LPGear)?
 
I recently purchased a Sansui SR 838 that had been stored by the original owner for 30 years, had no idea at the time what model of Empire cartridge was mounted but once I had the turntable at home and removed the head shell I discovered it was a 2000T with the chrome finish stylus body.

At first I though the stylus was useless as it looked like a blob of hardened crud but decided to take a chance and immerse it in a small container of rather strong household cleaner. In short order the built up material was dissolved though it stripped the finish so now have a clear plastic body. The suspension appears to have survived the ordeal.


I paid 125.00 Cdn. for the turntable so basically got it for free considering what a good 2000T would sell for. I have yet to try it out but plan on doing that before long.


I do have another Empire cartridge, the 4000 XL1 and have the basic OEM elliptical but also purchased a Nagaoka GD 89-401E stylus which mentions it as a replacement for the S 4000D.

Supposedly a decent stylus.


IMG_7340.jpegIMG_7338.jpegIMG_7339.jpeg
 
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I forgot to add. I measured the gap between bottom of cartridge and record surface. It is about 0,8 mm. Is it normal for Empire 2000Z? Or suspension is weaked? I ask because I never owned Empire carts and never had too low sit any carts. So I'm a little worry about that and maybe I need to look for a new stylus?
 
I don't want to be the killjoy here, but to my eye, it looks too low. Now, if the thing sounds good, tracks well, and isn't upset by warps, then the safe thing to do is leave it alone.

But to make sure, I set up my 2000T, the closest to a Z I have with me here, and set it to 1.0g by my faithful digital scale. It's not up on tiptoe, but it's certainly not as low as Discofan's Z at the same tracking force/weight. Now, it could be that my T has a slightly age-hardened suspension and Discofan's Z has retained its youthful elasticity. Or it could be that my T is only moderately aged and Discofan's Z has aged to the point where it has taken a "set" such that it lacks the elasticity to lift the cartridge and arm farther off the disc.

If the latter guess is correct, my test for lost elasticity --not without risk-- is to remove the headshell from the arm (or leave it on the 'table, whichever is more convenient), view the headshell from the side, and very carefully push the cantilever down with a toothpick or steady finger until it wants to stop. Let it go, observe, then slowly lift it back up and release, observing again.

If the cantilever wants to stay wherever it's released, or wants to return to an angle that's anything but not-quite-all-the-way down, it's likely a classic case of age-hardening, but it could be other things too. This is a tricky diagnosis over the internet, and, as I say, not without risk. Which is why I say that if it's usable as it is now, leave it alone.
 
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Indeed, sometimes the best can be the enemy of good. If the cartridge sounds good like this, it's best to leave it as is. My 2000 E III cartridges, equipped with E II or E III diamonds, are also pretty close to the surface of the record, but they sound fine, with 1.25 gr (1.0 gr sometimes works too, but I find that with 1.25, it's better). So it's quite likely that the suspension is a little loose, but then just leave it like that ;)
 
wualta said:
I don't want to be the killjoy here, but to my eye, it looks too low. Now, if the thing sounds good, tracks well, and isn't upset by warps, then the safe thing to do is leave it alone.

But to make sure, I set up my 2000T, the closest to a Z I have with me here, and set it to 1.0g by my faithful digital scale. It's not up on tiptoe, but it's certainly not as low as Discofan's Z at the same tracking force/weight. Now, it could be that my T has a slightly age-hardened suspension and Discofan's Z has retained its youthful elasticity. Or it could be that my T is only moderately aged and Discofan's Z has aged to the point where it has taken a "set" such that it lacks the elasticity to lift the cartridge and arm farther off the disc.

If the latter guess is correct, my test for lost elasticity --not without risk-- is to remove the headshell from the arm (or leave it on the 'table, whichever is more convenient), view the headshell from the side, and very carefully push the cantilever down with a toothpick or steady finger until it wants to stop. Let it go, observe, then slowly lift it back up and release, observing again.

If the cantilever wants to stay wherever it's released, or wants to return to an angle that's anything but not-quite-all-the-way down, it's likely a classic case of age-hardening, but it could be other things too. This is a tricky diagnosis over the internet, and, as I say, not without risk. Which is why I say that if it's usable as it is now, leave it alone.
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I have a 2000Z with the 2000T stylus. It rides very close to vinyl tracking at 1.25 g but never bottoms. It sounds fabulous. The stylus on these carts were very short by design and I think work and look as designed.
 
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