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Empire 3000 ZE cartridge replacement styli

klamsoss

klamsoss

Be willing to fail and try again.
The record store I go to regularly is run by a super nice guy who always cuts me ridiculously good deals (to the extent that I sometimes have to remind him he is running a business, and one that I would like to remain comfortably solvent). In return, I help him out with repairs on stuff from time to time.

He gave me a few turntables that needed some love. Mostly just your basic replacing bulging electrolyitic motor capacitors, cleaning stuff, oiling other stuff, replacing styli and aligning cartridges. That's where I am with a Technics sl23 right now. Surprisingly well built little 'table, with a nicer arm and plinth than you'd expect on a low-to-mid market machine. It's got an Empire 3000 ZE cartridge on it.

I know there is some (a lot?) of overlap on which styli will work for this cartridge, but I am having trouble figuring out which ones actually are SUPPOSED to go with it, vs compatible enough to get sound. Some of the threads are old and the recommended replacements are no longer available.

Before folks start spitting out recommendations, the other thing I'd like to hear from folks who have heard the 3000 ZE is whether this is a cartridge I should pull and save for myself. From what I can tell, replacement styli range from $25-200.

If this cartridge is a real performer that I don't want to miss (i.e. it competes favorably with the likes of an ortofon blue, grado gold, At-VM540ML, Denon 103, Shure v15 III, etc), then maybe I'll spend more, get the better stylus, and keep this one for myself. I've got a few pretty good run-of-the-mill carts I could swap on SL-23 in that case.
 
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I agree with Sally . The empires I have heard all sound really nice. They are well balanced carts that just sound great. Even with lower tier styli.

Athanasios
 
Can anyone offer a comparison of sound with other cartridges? especially those listed?

I haven't owned an Empire cart previously and have no sense of their character.
 
I think it's a 2000x renamed , excellent cartridge . Which are a 4000/440d , 4 channel cartridges renamed for the stereo market . With the right stylus they sound great big detailed balanced with great seperation .
 
There were two similar-looking but very different 3000ZEs (sometimes 3000 ZE). One, a 2000T clone, had blue/cyan lettering on a silver body and the other, the 2000X clone, had red lettering on a gold body. Yeah, somebody at Empire screwed up. Which one have you got? And what stylus is on it now?
 
I have red lettering on a gold body. The stylus... hard to know. It's a shiny red thing with a flip-down protector.

I'll post a couple pictures tomorrow.
 
Sounds very much like a 2000X stylus on what's definitely a 2000X body. An excellent stylus if it's genuine and in good shape. Hard to find if it isn't, though.

Your 3000 ZE can use several families of Empire styli-- the 4000D family of CD-4 styli (S440D, S4000D/I, S4000D/II, S4000D/III); the red metallic S917E, and finally the styli meant for the 66 family (S906, S906E, S910E, S912E). Jump on the Big Empire Thread Nashou66 linked to and let us know your budget and readiness to hunt down long out-of-production styli.
 
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Now that I have some pics, perhaps @sanlanman @boreas @Gretsch6120 @desertrat748 @wualta or @Wolfie62 will weigh in. They seem to be the empire experts and aficionados. That vintage empire thread is not the easiest to follow but there is a boatload of good info on there! Only 9 mentions of the 3000 ze, though. None of them were conclusive on what currently available stylus options are out there.

Looks like there are even more stylus options than I thought there were (which is saying something!).
 

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Since your 3000 ZE (assuming it has its original S917E stylus) is the same thing as a 2000X, simply search for the 2000X. No need to confine yourself to the 3000 ZE, which is merely one of several clone or rebadge models using the same s917e stylus.

Now, since you've specified currently-available stylus options, and the original styli have been out of production for decades, it gets tricky and often difficult. If you'd like to avoid a long hunt, and I don't blame you, I'd recommend something like the Audio-Technica you mentioned. There's something to be said for being able to pluck a worthy and competent cartridge-- and replacement styli-- right off the shelf.
 
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Overall it seems that these are pretty well respected cartridges and this one is probably more worthy of being in my small collection of cartridges rather than staying on a turntable that will most likely be purchased by someone who will set it on top of one of their speakers and tell their friends about how "vinyls just sound better than CDs... man, you gotta get some vinyls". :rolleyes:

It would seem that LP gear and LP tunes (are these actually the same company under different banners?) have some options. The Turntable Needles website has at least two offerings. I checked out JICO as well. They don't appear to have anything that they advertise as an S917E replacement, nor S 2000 X, though there are styli offered for various other iterations of a 2000 or S 20000 offered. From what I gather, those would not necessarily be the ideal match with the body I have.

The $37 offering on LP gear claims to be a .0003x.0007 elliptical on a "low mass" cantilever. This appears to be the same as the "LPtunes" offering for $35.
Then there is a S917VL "upgrade for Empire S917E) for $80, which claims to be a .0002x.0030 elliptical on an alloy cantilever. I'm not sure why they would describe it as an "upgrade" if they also sell something they describe as a "genuine" Empire replacement stylus for more than twice the price. I'm also not sure how an "upgrade" would have what seems to be a lesser base geometry, but then my DL-103 has a spherical stylus and has great sound, so clearly it's not simply about the shape of the diamond.
LPtunes has a $140 offering of a "Empire S2000X stylus" which is a .0002x.0007 elliptical on an alloy tube canti. They also have a $140 S917E stylus with the same description. I suspect these are actually exactly the same stylus.
The $180 offerings appear to be identical to one another to my eye, and from the descriptions. This consists of a .0002x.0007 elliptical stylus with alloy cantilever. I believe these are claimed to be "genuine" on each of the 3 offering sites, but I would have to double check.

My gut says that the most expensive ones are probably the best performing, and might be "genuine", but are more likely just good quality replicas. The two middle offerings are a crapshoot and I have no idea what kind of quality they might represent. Likewise, my gut says the cheapies are probably very serviceable replacement styli but that they probably won't result in the cartridge performing its best. I could be completely wrong, though.
 
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wualta said:
You are, instead, completely right.
Well, your gut is.
Click to expand...

@wualta somehow I missed your response in post #9 above. I was probably writing the subsequent post. My bad!
Also, I have been having trouble getting pictures to upload to original posts for some reason. I've now updated post #10 with the photos I took earlier.

Given the applicability of the other lines of stylus you mention there in post #9, it seems that JICO actually does have several styli I could use. In theory, shouldn't one of the shibata tipped 4000 series JICO styli yield better performance than the ellipticals of the non-JICO offerings just based on the diamond shape? and at a lower price than the maybe-genuine replacements offered elsewhere?
Should I take this kind of question to the previously linked big empire thread? (I didn't want to clutter it up with questions about non original styli, although with that many pages of comments I'm probably being overly concerned with post etiquette... :crazy: )

Additional pics of the current stylus here.
 

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Yes, we should convey you to the Big Empire Thread for your baptism... and I see you're already there!
 
Can anyone report on the output voltage, compliance, or recommended tracking force for my genuine original empire 3000ZE cartridge?

I figure I would start tracking around 1.5g and see how it sounds, but I also want to figure out if it would work best on a very light tonearm (like a carbon arm on a Pro-Ject), a moderately heavy arm (like the stock SL1200 arm), or a moderate to heavy arm like the one found on my Thorens TD-165.
Output is not especially high priority. I just like to have that in my spreadsheet.
 
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