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Sanyo MG26 (Red Ed) VS Pickering XSV 3000/D3000 Side-by-Side...

motleypixel

motleypixel

New Member
Hey folks,

Got my first TT about 6 months ago. This vinyl stuff is fun :) LOL, yes 6 months ago! I've refreshed my early 90's stereo gear and this time introduced a Pioneer PL-7. I'm having fun!

I'd like some feedback on this comparison. I'm pretty sure I rambled too much and I need to condense future comparisons. I'm also sure that I'm doing something along the way that is not best practice. I've literally just put this together with limited knowledge. I'm getting my 3rd PL-7 headshell in from ebay soon so I should have room for future cart/stylus comparisons.

Another thing I want to point out is it seems when both carts are playing and the meters are deflecting, most of the time when I pause the video the Red Ed has a higher dynamic range. That being said the Pickering certainly seems to sound more open and it's obvious in the higher frequencies on the spectrum analyzer.

Thoughts?

Thank you,
Roy

 
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The Sanyo sounds a bit smeared and the low freqs sound compressed, the Pickering is more defined and open
 
A Pickering is far and away the better cartridge. I've been a Shure and Stanton (Pickering) fan since the late 1960's.

A couple years ago I needed a cheap cartridge to install on a friends Dual turntable. At a local shop, the cheapest cartridge they had was either a Sanyo "Red Ed" or an Audio Technica something or other, both for under $30. I opted for the Sanyo because it's minimum tracking force was a gram less than the AT.

Turned out the friend never used the table and when she moved, it was given to me. At home, I listened to the Dual/Sanyo combo briefly and the upper frequencies were really abrasive. I removed the Sanyo, installed a Shure M91ED (because I had several) and the sound quality was so much better.

The Sanyo cartridge went on a less than perfect Sony table which went to used record shop for consignment sale. It sold quickly and never came back so I guess the buyer was satisfied.

Besides the lower tracking force, I picked the Sanyo because I liked the "Red Ed" hype. I don't know why it was hyped because I sure didn't think it was deserved.
 
motleypixel said:
Hey folks,

Got my first TT about 6 months ago. This vinyl stuff is fun :) LOL, yes 6 months ago! I've refreshed my early 90's stereo gear and this time introduced a Pioneer PL-7. I'm having fun!

I'd like some feedback on this comparison. I'm pretty sure I rambled too much and I need to condense future comparisons. I'm also sure that I'm doing something along the way that is not best practice. I've literally just put this together with limited knowledge. I'm getting my 3rd PL-7 headshell in from ebay soon so I should have room for future cart/stylus comparisons.

Another thing I want to point out is it seems when both carts are playing and the meters are deflecting, most of the time when I pause the video the Red Ed has a higher dynamic range. That being said the Pickering certainly seems to sound more open and it's obvious in the higher frequencies on the spectrum analyzer.

Thoughts?
Click to expand...
My thoughts are that once an analog signal is converted to digital, it's hard to get any meaningful information from a listening comparison. My limited experience has been that pace, rhythm, and dynamics all suffer, and even the best vinyl playback ends up being no more involving than a cd player. So I think the time spent on actual A/B comparisons can be shortened up quite a bit, and what I'm really interested in is your appraisal of how enjoyable each cartridge is for you when you're just listening to a record. Do either have an irritating element to the sound that you find distracting? Does one do a better job of sucking you into the performance, really appreciating what the musicians are doing?

Some background on the cartridge choices would be interesting to hear, too. As far as I can find, there is no official distribution company for Sanyo cartridges (did you find one in a shop, like 62vauxhall did?), and the Pickering ceased production about 30 years ago, so telling the story of how you ended up with them would add interest, at least to me.

I thought the speaking voice was very good, very effective. I also sampled a couple other videos at the Roy Niswanger YouTube channel, enjoying the shake reduction comparison with a Ricoh firmware update and a short video about fishing beyond the breakers.

Edit: Just thought I'd add that I did enjoy a Pickering XSV-3000 in a friend's system, but that was about 40 years ago, and while I haven't heard a Sanyo MG-29, I did very much enjoy the Goldring Elan, which some people here thought might be a re-badged MG-29.
 
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@62vauxhall thank you for the reply. This is my first TT LOL, yeah I didn't really get into music until I was 16 and that was 1990 so CD was the go-to medium then. I'm still young though, just hit 50 yesterday. This TT came with the Red Ed. and it was here that I only found out that it was a Red Ed and so I staked out looking and here in the Austin, TX area there are loads of TT gear available on the private markets. Both carts are good enough for me, but I do like the Pickering better. Especially playing REM's Adventures in Hi-Fi, a record I'm wondering is not such a great pressing as it sounds really compressed, but this Pickering sure livens it up!
 
@jrtrent thank you very much for the comments and input. Speaking of analog and digital, I'd like to share with you and the whole lot here on this forum what I'm doing to listen to vinyl on my Bower and Wilkins PX7 headphones. This is probably going to get me in a lot of heat, but it works and boy it's fun, for me anyway, to listen to vinyl over my "good to me" headphones. I thought for sure that I would be turned off with the noise artifacts that come along with listening to vinyl but I was really surprised on how clean and "different" vinyl sounds over BT to these headphones VS say CD out via optical to my DAC or streaming LDAC/APTX-HD.

I'm running stock grounded RCA out of my PL-7 to a U-Turn Pluto 2 phono pre-amp, then RCA out of that to a small (cheap, about $20) "analog" to digital converter, then digital coax out of that into my DAC. Then I switch my input on the DAC to Coax and switch the output from RCA to BT transmit to my headphones and BAM I'm listening to vinyl on BT. I've got to be taking a hit somewhere but boy it sure sounds fine to me :)

I agree a bit on giving more background etc. Maybe less on the technical, but then again I'd probably have the other side of the coin asking what bit/sample rates etc. As I mentioned in another reply above, the Red Ed came with this PL-7 I bought for $100 about 6 months ago. I didn't know what cart it was until I joined here and asked. At that point I started looking at getting another cart. I also discovered another user vinylrescue and he's helped me a lot. The Pickering was listed on fb marketplace for $200...I traded that guy it for my Sony XM3 headphones. This is just fun hobby stuff for me, but I do love listening to music...who shouldn't, right?
 
motleypixel said:
@62vauxhall thank you for the reply. This is my first TT LOL, yeah I didn't really get into music until I was 16 and that was 1990 so CD was the go-to medium then. I'm still young though, just hit 50 yesterday.
Click to expand...
Well, 50 isn't terribly old, but it does qualify you as having already lived a full life, an old enough age that should you die now you've still had a satisfyingly long time on this earth.

That's not just my own opinion, it comes straight from the dialogue in an episode of the Cannon television series (about a portly private investigator played by William Conrad in the 1970's). In season 2, episode 24, "Deadly Heritage," a thief has broken into a woman's home and is searching her bedroom. When she wakes up we hear:

Thief: Where's the safe?
Woman: There is no safe.
Thief: Look! Don't lie!
Woman: Don't lie? Why not! I'm a 50-year-old woman; I've lived a full life, and I'm telling you there is no safe. Now if you want to kill me for that, you go right ahead!

I saw that episode as a teenager, and once I hit 50 I became totally at peace with death, knowing that, like that woman, I, too, had lived a full life. I've had friends and family who passed the 50-year threshold, but who still had anxieties about possible life-threatening illnesses, risky surgeries, or who might have been fearful about air travel or how much more violent their neighborhoods had become. Once they've seen that episode of Cannon, though, all those concerns just melted away.
 
Whether the show is Cannon, Harry O, Peter Gunn, or many others along with a little Twilight Zone added an entire philosophy of life can constructed. Worked for me...:smoke:
 
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