Show us your cartridges and/or tonearms!
- Thread starter davidro
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Andrei
Active Member
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best-groove
Active Member
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Great, excellent job.....what can you tell me about the sound now that the cartridge is naked?
Andrei
Active Member
I can say that it is really hard to believe that a plastic shell could impair the sound so much...The channel separation increased significantly, everything is more precise, focused, the definition is astonishing...it's really like I have a different cartridge, a more expensive one.
best-groove
Active Member
And yet, that’s exactly how it is!!
It seems incredible how much sonic disaster a cartridge body can cause even though it’s necessary to protect the delicate wires from hand-handling during mounting and unmounting from the headshell.
But this is a massive, zero-cost upgrade—you just need the courage to take the leap..., use the right tools, and handle everything 'always' with extreme care and patience (including for adjustments and alignment), as if you were defusing a bomb.
I can't remember if I've already written this, but it’s an experiment I stumbled upon by chance over 40 years ago.
The quest for the inky blackness is over. If previously moving the Skoll away from amp and TT motor side halved the hum, the hot rod DL-103r is 95% quieter and digs much deeper for bass with the AU-320 SUT on the Skoll SE outputs. I just put in new 3ft midline Guitar Center (5 minutes away) balanced cables and found the last 5% of inky blackness. Fun fact about Skoll - since it doesn’t switch between inputs both signal paths are hot and can be wired to the Freya + for hot switching on the fly. The difference between balanced and SE outputs is significant.
Ahhh there’s peace in the valley.
The 45 don’t lie, I listened to 2 full minutes of leadout grove on my Audeze cans and heard nothing but click.
The quest for the inky blackness is over. If previously moving the Skoll halved the hum, the hot rod DL-103r is 95% quieter and digs much deeper for bass with the AU-320 SUT on the Skoll SE outputs. I just put in new 3ft midline Guitar Center (5 minutes away) balanced cables and found the last 5% of inky blackness. Fun fact about Skoll - since it doesn’t switch between inputs both signal paths are hot and can be wired to the Freya + for switching on the fly. The difference between balanced and SE outputs is significant.
Ahhh there’s peace in the valley.
The 45 don’t lie.
Ahhh there’s peace in the valley.
The 45 don’t lie, I listened to 2 full minutes of leadout grove on my Audeze cans and heard nothing but click.
The quest for the inky blackness is over. If previously moving the Skoll halved the hum, the hot rod DL-103r is 95% quieter and digs much deeper for bass with the AU-320 SUT on the Skoll SE outputs. I just put in new 3ft midline Guitar Center (5 minutes away) balanced cables and found the last 5% of inky blackness. Fun fact about Skoll - since it doesn’t switch between inputs both signal paths are hot and can be wired to the Freya + for switching on the fly. The difference between balanced and SE outputs is significant.
Ahhh there’s peace in the valley.
The 45 don’t lie.
It's been ages since the last time I've had 510 on my tonearm. Mainly because I also got 530(en), 540(ml) and 740(ml) carts, all matched with their corresponding HS10 and MG10 headshells, so there was really no need for me to use this thing.
That being said, I'm getting ready to move out and figured I'd need to find a better way to secure that VM510 so that it doesn't get damaged in the process. I assumed that I could just easily buy another AT-HS10 headshell & secure it inside the headshell stand, but apparently that's no longer the case as Audio Technica seems to be phasing out HS10 line. Either that or there is some weird, world-wide shortage of legacy Audio Technica products.
Long story short, I eventually ordered one of the few remaining HS10 shells from another country & immediately bolted VM510 onto it. Honestly, it actually sounds way better than I remember (perhaps because I'm using a different preamp?) until you reach the inner groove(s). But that was to be expected, as there is no way that a bonded conical could go against nude MicroLine.
Although I find it more or less useless in every-day applications, I could think of few uses for 510 in the long run, but it kinda brings out the obvious question to why would I even keep 510 inside the box of "spares" if I'm not going to use it for anything.
Speaking of which, take my advice folks. If you need to buy HS10 headshell in either black or silver give it a search & do it immediately, without hesitation. It literally took me 3 or 4 days to locate one for sale in EU region, as most (all?) other stores have them listed as "SOLD OUT" and/or "no longer available"
That being said, I'm getting ready to move out and figured I'd need to find a better way to secure that VM510 so that it doesn't get damaged in the process. I assumed that I could just easily buy another AT-HS10 headshell & secure it inside the headshell stand, but apparently that's no longer the case as Audio Technica seems to be phasing out HS10 line. Either that or there is some weird, world-wide shortage of legacy Audio Technica products.
Long story short, I eventually ordered one of the few remaining HS10 shells from another country & immediately bolted VM510 onto it. Honestly, it actually sounds way better than I remember (perhaps because I'm using a different preamp?) until you reach the inner groove(s). But that was to be expected, as there is no way that a bonded conical could go against nude MicroLine.
Although I find it more or less useless in every-day applications, I could think of few uses for 510 in the long run, but it kinda brings out the obvious question to why would I even keep 510 inside the box of "spares" if I'm not going to use it for anything.
Speaking of which, take my advice folks. If you need to buy HS10 headshell in either black or silver give it a search & do it immediately, without hesitation. It literally took me 3 or 4 days to locate one for sale in EU region, as most (all?) other stores have them listed as "SOLD OUT" and/or "no longer available"
PeterV59
New Member
Gold Note Donatello Gold low output mc on Oracle's unipivot arm. A really smooth and very musical cartridge works well with that arm.
Then there's the Hana SH on a Systemdek II with a Jelco SA250 ST arm. Another sweet combo, not as revealing as the Gold Note but revealing enough.
The Ortofon and the Pickering have been with me a long time. The MC1 is ok but unremarkable, the Pickering a low output MM, a real classic standout but since the Stereohedron stylus was replaced with a Jico equivalent (nothing equivalent about it) it's waiting for a NOS to maybe appear one day.
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