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Shibata on an M91ED? Why not!

Skizo, it's a fair question but it's based on two misconceptions, one of which is that if a cartridge is only spec'd from 20 to 20k, it can't produce signal beyond that-- ask the CD-4 AKers for some examples to the contrary. Published specs usually delineate the lowest performance envelope a unit is guaranteed to meet. Old specs were more specific about this, saying things like "hum & noise: 55dB down or better". In other words, if the mfr. doesn't mention response beyond 20kHz, it just means they're not making contractual promises about performance beyond that point. The AT440MLa works beautifully for CD-4 playback, though if your interpretation of the response spec were taken to its logical end, the cartridge would suddenly stop outputting after 20kHz, and that's evidently not the case. Specs are not for defining how a unit sounds, but to show how poorly the unit can perform without obligating the mfr. to replace it.

The other misconception is that I intend to "accomplish" anything beyond the "Hey, lookit that!" of putting a $25 line-contact in a 1968 Shure and finding that it sounds pretty dang good (oh, and maybe giving other people some even crazier ideas). Accomplish? Har. Nothing could be further from the truth.

There are a lot of old CD-4 styli out there languishing in vendors' drawers, and with near-zero demand, prices are surprisingly low (for now). If we can't easily get the original bodies, well, there are others.

Hoodie: glad to hear Raspy went away. It's an unusual stylus shape for Shure-- they never went there again-- and I wonder if it's ultrapicky about its alignment. In later (ca. 1978) brochures, Shure actually compared the hyperbolic tip shape unfavorably to their then-new Hyperelliptical, relegating the N24H's shape to the shadows of the distant past, standing with the conical and elliptical with their shamefully high levels of THD. See the section titled "The Hyperelliptical Tip", found in Shure's 1978 Technical Seminar, found in abridged form in the May and June 1978 issues of Audio.
 
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The EVG Sanyo "614-DQ" arrived today and after doing some teejus M97xE/M97HE tests for another thread, I happily plugged the Sanyo stylus into my Excel ES-70S body and played my usual sibilants torture test track, side 1/cut 1 of Joe Jackson's Night & Day. Passed with colors flying at 1.54g.

Getting under a strong light and using my splendid aplanat apochromat $3 60x eBay pocket magnifier to overcome sucky eyesight, I noticed the presumed-Excel (clear red) and Sanyo (clear smoke) cantilevers and styli are different. The presumed-Excel is a straightsided tube while the Sanyo is tapered. The spatular areas are similar but not the same. The presumed-Excel diamond is mounted diasa style, a diamond tip glued to a sapphire stump. The Sanyo reminds me of early ADC diamonds-- this one sticks 'way out the back of the cantilever and simply pokes through the canti without a clearly visible bushing on the faceted end. So two different philosophies (and maybe manufacturers) are at work here, but they [the styli, not the manufacturers] sound very similar, so I don't see a problem with trying the Sanyo in your M91/2/3E... UPDATE: but see post #51 and GDave's discovery of the Sanyo's actual diamond cut, which I didn't even think to check. I'm so gullible.
 
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Yeah, my little old Lafayette 99-1012 (AR-381) one, which is either 75X or 50X (depending on whether you believe what's written on the box or on the scope, itself), I bought in the late sixties, while pretty useless for seeing stylus wear, is excellent for this kind of stuff.

:D

Doug
 
Yup, they're extremely handy and at the moment the little 60x job is extremely cheap on eBay, and while I'm kidding about the aplanatic and apochromatic quality of the optics, it's Good Enough. I've scattered a bunch of them about the place. I also use a bright LED desk lamp which runs cool enough that I can get close to it without burning or melting anything. The nice thing about LED desk lamps is that you can get them as large-area emitters (soft shadows) or point-source collimated sources (distinct shadows).
 
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I've acquired two Excel cartridge bodies (ES-70EX and ES-70S) and have one EVG 614-DQ with another on the way :thmbsp:
 
Cool! the EX has a 2x8 elliptical and response out to 35kHz, per the specs. Also 0.5mg effective tip mass, which, if the measurement methods are the same (doubtful), puts it with the famous Empire 1000ZE/X. Not the lowest, but it doesn't have to be.

When the EX arrives, please slap an ohmmeter across its terminals, won't you? In the meantime, I should try my 4614-DQ on something like the VST III body to see if the top octave pops out.
 
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I just got an EVG (Sanyo) 614-DQ, and it's not Shibata at all, just a bonded elliptical! :thumbsdn:

I also got a Shure N24H. It fits the V15-IV body perfectly if you remove the snap-down stylus guard. Under the microscope it's a nice clear nude Shibata, as expected.

It handles highs well, but I heard some mistracking at vocal fundamental frequencies. A look at the trackability specs bears this out - while it FAR exceeds the V15-III at 5kHz and up, it's inferior to the M91ED below this. It's really frustrating. :sigh:

Dave
 
Interesting. Have you got images of the Sanyo version from your microscope you can show us?
 
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No, sorry, it's a low-power stereo scope without a camera mount. But the classic elliptical front and back cuts are clearly visible, with no sign of the heart-shaped pair of rear cuts that I saw on the N24H. It (my 614-DQ) looks like every other two-cut bonded elliptical. (A couple of my ellipticals appear to have been ground and polished to a true ellipse, with no visible cuts.) It came from needledaddy, and the EVG package says Sanyo. The grip is translucent smoke color, and the cantilever is tapered. Adding insult to injury, he raised his price shortly before I bought it - he must be running low. I'm going to return it.

FWIW,
Dave
 
I managed to get a picture after all. You can clearly see the front cut. The back cut looks the same.

In case someone's even less picture-savvy than I, here's how I did it.

1. Set camera to "small spot" autofocus
2. Butt camera lens against microscope eyepiece
3. Bring tip into approximate focus using my eye in the other eyepiece
4. Work camera repeatedly, moving object up or down until camera focuses on the tip
5. Snap it
6. Again, rotating object slightly hoping to get the facet lit up
7. Again... many times
8. Upload to picresize.com and crop

The attached picture is the best of about twenty tries. Then I also attached an overall shot for comparison/identification.

Dave
 

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Sho nuff looks like the front face of a standard 2x7 elliptical. Thanks for the photos (which I know are a pain without a camera adapter) and let us know how the return goes.
[UPDATE: now that I have my own "614-DQ" from this vendor, plus S70EX styli from other sources, it's obvious that the above photo shows that stylus to be an S70EX-- an excellent stylus, has the tapered cantilever of the EX4 as in G.Dave's photo, but of course elliptical, not Shibata.]
 
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Pardon me if you already said, but who did you get yours from? How much are they now? When I looked, ND seemed to be the low price.

Dave
 
Got mine from Gary at thevoiceofmusic.com, and he was out of stock a few months ago. It appears that no one else stocked that same stylus.
 
wualta said:
Got mine from Gary at thevoiceofmusic.com, and he was out of stock a few months ago. It appears that no one else stocked that same stylus.
Click to expand...

Well, eBay seller Merlin!! may have them. The graphic in his listing shows a translucent red stylus grip. Trouble is, he wants $41.70 shipped, twice what Gary was charging.

John
 
More-serious money makes it a more-serious project. Still, that's not an outrageous price for a line-contact stylus these days and fun can still be wrung from it. Thanks for the heads up.
 
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GrampaDave said:
I also got a Shure N24H. It fits the V15-IV body perfectly if you remove the snap-down stylus guard. Under the microscope it's a nice clear nude Shibata, as expected.

It handles highs well, but I heard some mistracking at vocal fundamental frequencies. A look at the trackability specs bears this out - while it FAR exceeds the V15-III at 5kHz and up, it's inferior to the M91ED below this. It's really frustrating. :sigh:

Dave
Click to expand...

It turns out that at least part of the N24H mistracking I heard is prior record damage. I have played other records without any trouble. I still believe the specs, but it's not the immediate reject I was afraid it was.

Dave
 
It is odd that the M24H can't track midrange-and-below frequencies as well as an M91E from ~five years earlier. Let us know if you try the M24H out on test records to see where the limits are (I've never heard any of my cartridges mistrack in the midrange-and-below, no matter how basic they were. Treble is another matter).

Like I said (somewhere), it's Shure's true oddball.

UPDATE: I did finally try my 4614-DQ on a Realistic-Shure V15 RS body. The level was way down (not a huge surprise, since it doesn't insert all the way without trimming), so this is not a setup I'd recommend unless you were willing to shave off the "wings" of the stylus so as to insert its shank farther into the RS/xMR/SC35C/M35X body (the latter two will require further plastic surgery because of their mounting caps). The main result of this experiment was the return of the top octave-plus, which was the result I was hoping for. I attribute this to a more linear magnetic circuit in the newer Shure. What a nice little stylus, I find myself saying.
 
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