They's just weird, that's what they is. I call 'em Chunkies because their chunky-looking mounting caps initially struck me as comical and possibly even too wide to fit in a standard headshell. About the threaded holes, though. Those are actually square black plastic threaded nuts friction-fit into slots in the sides. A good jostle will make some of them fall out; ask me how I know. If you have your Chunky nuts, you're a lucky man. But if the little bolts you already have are threaded differently, slide the nuts out and go your own way. A felicitous design touch.
The 'Chunkies' (real name: Dynamic Interface) followed the EDR.9 into the marketplace around 1981, and this series pretty much replaced the all-metal ovoid ones ("Blobs") Gadget was thinking of.
And yes, they made a smothering blizzard of both types. The metal blob kind came in 2½ distinct inductance flavors, such that you
ideally put a given body with a stylus that was "voiced" for it. The Chunkies have two, one for the early few high-falutin' styli and one for the rest of us who can't afford nice things.
Geek note: Even though Empire had already reached a significant milestone with the claimed 0.2mg ETM (effective [ie, moving] tip mass) of the 1976 2000Z/T and their clones, they didn't go there again until the 800 UFR Chunky and then the svelte-looking series that followed the Chunkies but used their styli, the GT or "Golden Touch" series.
The EDR.9's ETM reached down to 0.3mg, but during the reign of the Dynamic Interface cartridges, nearly all styli had ETMs no better than 0.6mg, the same as the old 2000E/I,II,III family. The elliptical 800 UFR is the single exception. But then the GT series hit. Their styli have gold-coated cantilevers with a built-in resonance damper, come in elliptical and "Paralinear" line-contact, and have a claimed ETM of 0.18mg. The interesting thing is, they were all voiced for 700mH bodies, so the lowliest/cheapest Chunk bodies can use GT styli-- if you can find them. Click to enlarge:
The same strategy goes for the 800 UFR stylus. Again, if you can find one.
To put all this in context, Empire's own CD-4 quad carts (4000D family) were 0.4mg. The 1000ZE/X was 0.5mg. Figures from different mfrs can't be directly compared without fudge factors, but you can get a general idea. All ETM figures I've cited for Empire cartridges were supplied by Empire in their printed material.
She's been really good with it, so I may try something else there someday. Maybe even bump up the stylus option when this one is done.:scratch2:
Last time install was on a generic silver headshell. Back to the thread.
