I had forgotten about the MP500. Would be interesting to know where they get their diamonds and cantilevers from as the rumour mill suggested namaki supplied a good chunk of the market. current price £700, which is out my budget and £400 for replacment tips. Like others the prices seem to have climbed a good 50% since 2000.
Certainly one to consider should I ever want another cartridge.
Certainly one to consider should I ever want another cartridge.
Shi* !
First they made beryllium unobtainable...now boron.
Would sapphire equal ruby?
Arne K
(My Denon DL-103M just doubled its value)
First they made beryllium unobtainable...now boron.
Would sapphire equal ruby?
Arne K
(My Denon DL-103M just doubled its value)
Sapphire and Ruby are the same material, just some extra stuff added to create the red colour.
I can't remember who but someone has done a hollow Sapphire cantilever which is trick if you can do it.
I can't remember who but someone has done a hollow Sapphire cantilever which is trick if you can do it.
It was Accuphase and their AC-2 mc that had a hollow sapphire cantilever
I do have a NOS sample and it was an Absolute Sound mag rave in its day like no other mc at the time.
While a stunning imaging champ even today, I have to say its dynamics were not up to cartridges that came later
A rather unique moving coil with special attributes in the sound field it generates
Regards
David
I do have a NOS sample and it was an Absolute Sound mag rave in its day like no other mc at the time.
While a stunning imaging champ even today, I have to say its dynamics were not up to cartridges that came later
A rather unique moving coil with special attributes in the sound field it generates
Regards
David
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The better Nagaoka cartridges look intriguing. I may try one just to have a better MM/MI cartridge to throw into the mix as a test for my experimental preamps. I've been using the Grado Gold or a Denon DL160, which is kind of cheating, as they don't care much about capacitance. It would be a nie test of a preamp to see if it sounds good with a cartridge using actually attainable values for capacitive loading.
I may end up instead getting something like an AT440MLb - not too pricey, but with a fine line stylus and a fiddly capacitance reqt sufficient to test an experimental MM input stage. A moving iron design might not be up to the task of separating out overly capacitive MM input stages. I've been biased against AT cartridges as being overly bright (read thin and shrieky!), but my latest efforts might be able to tame that trait. I'll never know unless I try.
Arne, for decades beryllium has been off cartridge manufacturers' material list due to toxicity, the escalating difficulty and cost of keeping manufacturing plants compliant with ever-stricter environmental regulations, and the unwillingness of workers to man beryllium production lines (or even work at the same premises).
For some time (2015 / 2016) boron wire suitable for cartridge cantilevers disappeared. The widespread availability and affordability of carbon fiber has made the comparatively expensive boron wire largely unattractive as a general structural or reinforcement material, and old stocks were finally depleted. But after considerable hair-pulling and searching, a manufacturer willing to make custom orders of suitably structured and dimensioned boron wire was finally found (http://www.specmaterials.com/.
But despite that boron wire is available once again, Ortofon has publicly stated that they will only use boron in their premium models - for the most part their high-performance material has become sapphire / ruby (due to it being widely manufactured for a variety of industrial applications). I gather that Ortofon's present attitude towards boron is "once burned, twice shy", which is difficult to fault.
Ruby and sapphire are largely the same material, with the difference being due to coloration and possibly trace elements added during the manufacturing process.
hope this helps
Well as SY found out ( and has graphs to prove) the ATs are nice and flat with a low enough capacitance phono stage.
Just about all the phono preamps I do these days have a cascoded front end, so I'm far more likely to be able to optimally load a fiddly AT cartridge. I may get myself a 440MLb for Christmas - I've had far worse things show up under the tree....
Even a BJT cascoded JFET front end is Ciss + 2x Crss + layout parasitics i.e. ~ 50pF for a K170. It would be OK with only half a meter TT cable though.
I have a couple of vacuum-state designs in the works that should fare better. Also, a cascoded 2SK117 (or maybe a 2SK209), or a folded cascode PN4393 might be better options for dealing with picky cartridges like the high-octane AT bunch.
You might want to look at the Leach JFET phono preamp. Dr. Leach advertised it at 20 pF input capacity. Those old Motorola JFETS with the low GM were used to advantage in the first stage of this design. I believe the first stage only had a gain of about 3, so not much Miller effect.
I'm familiar with that circuit, including the original 70's articles in Audio mag, but I'm finding my own ways to get into trouble, documented fairly extensively here...
I may be pulling the trigger on this soon. LP Gear offers an option already mounted on headshell w/ nice wires, so I might pursue that option so I have a readily swappable cartridge.
And don't forget the cartridge equivalent parallel capacitance. This is analogous to a capacitor's equivalent series inductance.
I figure that the folks at A-T aren't all that dense, and that the intrinsic capacitance of the cartridge is already factored into the termination requirements. All the external factors are another matter entirely...
Wel,l I pulled the trigger and got an AT44MLB. I know it probalby not a bodacious as the 150MLX, but it wil still be a pretty fine cartridge and serve as a good tester for my experimental preamps.
I haven't had to pay too much attention to loading capacitance for quite a while, as all the cartridges I've owned for the past twenty years or so have either been high output MCs (Sumiko Blue Point, Denon DL160) or Grados.
I haven't had to pay too much attention to loading capacitance for quite a while, as all the cartridges I've owned for the past twenty years or so have either been high output MCs (Sumiko Blue Point, Denon DL160) or Grados.
Congrats, I am sure it will trigger a nice new preamp design of yours.
BTW little off topic: I had missed a question for me in an older thread of yours, it was about CCSed shunt regs current level and THD on sinusoidal load component. I noticed it rather too late. So, yes they do benefit by more standing current for THD both objectively and subjectively as repeatedly mentioned by early evaluation experience in the long winding phono thread. And yes you remembered that correctly.
BTW little off topic: I had missed a question for me in an older thread of yours, it was about CCSed shunt regs current level and THD on sinusoidal load component. I noticed it rather too late. So, yes they do benefit by more standing current for THD both objectively and subjectively as repeatedly mentioned by early evaluation experience in the long winding phono thread. And yes you remembered that correctly.
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