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The ADC P-Mount That Wanted to be Real

I would have missed this thread had Stanton681eees not pointed it out - glad he did.

Never knew ADC made a P-Mount that's really interesting!

FWIW having used the Japanese made MkII for quite a while I'd always been interested in hearing more about its MkIII brother which I don't have. The JII (I like the J designation good idea wualta!) also has rectangular shank (tombstone) like your JIII. The rectangular shank on the JII was a significant departure for ADC as all previous MkIIs had round shanks. Also the diamond tip of the JII appears to have the smaller dimensions of a MkIII stylus. So I'd always wondered if the only difference between the JII and JII was the staight vs. tapered cantilever? Having so much in common I suspect the JII and JIII sound similar.

Just one more thing I wanted to add, the machined Omni pivot though claimed to be superior to the earlier non-Improved coined design was thought by some to detract from the XLMs sound. I personally agree thinking the original pre-Improved MkII as the most musical of the bunch. The Improved Omni pivot was really ADCs solution to the problem of the stylus sometimes pulling out of the rubber suspension block and have to admit it fixed the problem.

Dave/ChairSpud
 
Thanks for posting; you're the 'ADC historian' I was hoping to hear from.

I think you may be right, that the only difference between the JII and JIII is the tapered canti. There are two ways they could have gone about creating the JII-- either copy the earlier design closely, or de-content the then-current Mk III design, in the same way the Integra XLM I, II and III were all based on Mk III Improved tech but with some of the goodies (like a tapered canti) taken out for the lesser I and II.

I don't know if the Omni-Pivot detracts from the sound, but it looks like a good idea on paper, and we all know about ideas like that, so I'm a little skeptical about claims that it improved the sound, but it probably did make it a little harder to pull out the cantilever... although if something is pulling that hard, it probably doesn't make a huge difference. I'd rather have the canti pull out without causing any damage, so it could be put back when the problem (bubblegum on the record?) was removed.

I've never had an ADC lose a canti, but I've bought cartridges sellers thought were "collapsed", and it turned out to be a pulled-out canti which the magnet had caught and saved.
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My ADC XT body has a quirk I should mention.

I thought I must be remembering wrong, but there have been occasions when I was listening to it that I could have sworn the channels were reversed. I was never convinced-- it seemed too bizarre-- but today I pulled out one of those handy JVC CD-4 test records with a channel ID track on it.

The announcer said the sequence of tones should begin with the left channel, but the tone came instead from the right channel. I know a few announcers and they always get things muddled, so I swapped in a Technics P24 cartridge, and sure as shootin', the tone started in the left channel as announced.

Not a dealbreaker, perhaps, but disturbing. This manufacturing error, if it was general¹, may partly explain the brief visit the XT cartridges paid to the marketplace. It could be that heads rolled, portfolios were handed in, and Azden was recruited to fill the gap with the PSX/SER series, which was announced in the audio magazines in the fall of 1983.
¹some exceptions have been reported
XT Stylus Update: I was never quite sure my XT styli were really operating at their best, and decided to take a chance on the miracle [yes, I'm kidding] stylus suspension restorer Rawn Re-Grip, as disclosed in the thread begun by our own boreas, the late John Barringer. Sound quality much improved, I'm guessing because the restored elasticity of the rubber controlled and damped the cantilever better. . Recommended. Just be careful and go slowly. Don't overdo it!
 
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Had a bunch of these Integra XT-II cartridges from a recent store buyout. They came packaged in the vertical mylar display tube with the hard felt covered inner support- similar to that of the Integra XLM series. The big selling point was that these had a NUDE mounted elliptical stylus where the XLM and others had their bonded "Diasa" stylus (diamond tip bonded to a sapphire shank). Normally I have a tougher time moving P-mount carts but these flew out the door. I think the XT-I had a spherical tip.
 
Recently saw a bunch of these on ebay (US) sold by Stereoexchange - would have snapped a couple up for myself, but couldn't bid on it....
 
wualta said:
My ADC XT body has a quirk I should mention.

I thought I must be remembering wrong, but there have been occasions when I was listening to it that I could have sworn the channels were reversed. I was never convinced-- it seemed too bizarre-- but today I pulled out one of those handy JVC CD-4 test records with a channel ID track on it.

The announcer said the sequence of tones should begin with the left channel, but the tone came instead from the right channel. I know a few announcers and they always get things muddled, so I swapped in a Technics P24 cartridge, and sure as shootin', the tone started in the left channel as announced.

Not a dealbreaker, perhaps, but disturbing. This manufacturing error, if it was general, may partly explain the brief visit the XT cartridges paid to the marketplace. It could be that heads rolled, portfolios were handed in, and Azden was called in to fill the gap with the PSX series. Stranger things have happened.
Click to expand...

I decided to see if these results were reproducible. I used my Command Stereo Check Record with a channel ID track. My Technics 310MC and my ADC PSX-40 tested as expected, but my ADC XT p-mounts, both the good one and the under-mass Rivertone one, had the left and right channels reversed.
 
It's been awhile, but there's some good news: tVOM has restocked the 115-DEZ, aka the R-XT IV, aka the Integra P-Mount Aliptic stylus. Not quite cheap, but extremely reasonable in today's crazy market. While they last. Other old ADC buddies are back for a short while too.
 
Had to pop in and say that the Super XLM Mk II stylus (yes, the one with the Shibata-ish diamond) sounds great in the Integra XT p-mount body. I was really surprised, since the tech this stylus uses is strictly 1975. It still shows signs of that underdamped spike at around 20 to 22kHz, but the higher inductance of the Integra body keeps the spike from overwhelming the sound. Everything sounds nice and tinkly, and more to the point, it's a clean tinkly.

The tracking ability was what surprised me most. In fact, the cartridge could Bangle its way through my torture disc with VTF to spare-- I was tracking at T4P midpoint, 1.25g, and the max VTF for the Super is 1.5. That's Stanton 881S territory, though of course the Stanton can do it at 1.0g. I'll have to do a back-to-back using the D81S stylus on a Pickering XSP-4004 p-mount body.
 
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I THINK I just saw one of these on a used table in a record store. Might be able to get it for around $60 (Technics belt drive). Store's closed this week though! I'm going to grab it if it's still there
 
Duit! Don't forget that the body reverses the channels¹.

¹exceptions have been reported
 
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Duit? he doodit ! Now to get a suitable stylus for the kind of work you do.
 
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I got one of these XT p-mounts cheap at auction, but it turned out to have extremely low output - so low it's nearly unusable. The production does seem shoddy, even if these are authentic in their provenance. The height profile doesn't fit p-mount adapters. The whole thing seems like an afterthought.
 
It may be defective, but we may as well check the obvious stuff. Try measuring the DC resistance of the coils and see if that reading is normal (760 ohms nominal). Which stylus are you testing it with?
 
P-mount adaptor height was never standardized, as the height of the cartridge was never part of the p-mount/T4P standard. The most common Shure adapter will fit most.

Of the two I have, one looks rough and is a couple grams short of the T4P standard. The other looks much nicer and is of the correct mass. Never had an issue with the output level, though.
 
I never use adaptors myself, but I did try to fit the XT cartridge into a Shure adaptor I have and it did not fit. Strange oversight. With that and the channels reversed¹, they would have had to scrap existing inventory and re-engineer the cartridge with new tooling, etc. Cheaper to simply import the PSX series. [SPOILER EDIT: but see post #53!]
¹some exceptions have been reported
 
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wualta said:
It may be defective, but we may as well check the obvious stuff. Try measuring the DC resistance of the coils and see if that reading is normal (760 ohms nominal). Which stylus are you testing it with?
Click to expand...
I'll get around to that someday... Tried several ADC styli, including my ZLM, all with the same results. I just didn't get lucky with this one!
 
Hey Wualta, now that I have your very august and appreciated attention (and not to hijack this thread): Do you happen to know anything about the theoretical suitability of a ZLM stylus with the S-arm Integra cartridge (the integrated headshell)? I just mounted this on my SME 3009 sII improved, and it sounds great to me. I can't tell from vinylengine whether these Integra cart bodies have similar specs to the ZLM cartridge (which isn't well documented there).

EDIT: Oh, okay...I just found your post in a different thread, reporting that "ZLMs shared a body with the XLM Mk IIIs and VLM Mk IIIs and even the QLM 36 Mk IIIs and the XLM Mk II Improved."
http://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/adc-xlm-zlm.567983/
Interesting...perhaps this means the Integra (RXT) cart body is pretty much the same as the ZLM?
 
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Technically, if you want to get really nitpicky, the bodies for the Integra and the ZLM (and/or the Mk III versions of the XLM/VLM/QLM36/QLM34) are not the same. However, they're so close it makes very little difference (480mH vs 580mH). The slight boost in the highest highs might be measurable, but it's very unlikely to be consciously audible. So go right ahead. Don't forget to remove the two screw-in weights on the Integra body.

Oh, and thanks for the kind words.

This maneuver is precisely what I've been doing by slipping ZLM styli on the Integra XT p-mount body.
 
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wualta said:
Don't forget to remove the two screw-in weights on the Integra body.
Click to expand...

Interesting - is this mandatory? I've been leaving the weights in. I am also aware that one can use the Integra without the weights (I did that with another one that I received with no weights). Do you think that I'd gain an audible advantage on the SME arm by lightening the headshell as much as possible?
 
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