GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Analog Playback
In the Thread: Buying a last cartridge.

Post Subject: Making "Adjustments"Posted by Paul S on: 4/18/2010

I admit that I am facinated with this cartridge, based on the undying hope that one day the unique and addictive (and ultimately, necessary...) "aliveness" might be had without the sort of mind-twisting torture that always prevailed. But this "review" did not really tell much about the development process, did it? I am left with plenty of questions.

For one thing, leave it to a "professional reviewer" to leave out the part about the adjustment screw(s?). Exactly what does this screw adjust, and what sort of controls are offered for repeatable adjustments? I "remember" turning that screw ad hoc to compensate for the effects of temperature, humidity, and ??? on the "film" to which the stylus is mounted.... Shades of Du Pre's cello! But that can't be right, can it?

I also wonder a lot about the process of dialing the thing in electrically, since I remember there was no "slack" in this - at all - in terms of integrating pitch, timbre, and balance with the "aliveness", and also output seemed to vary considerably once the parameters were set, based at least partly, I presumed, on whatever the tension of that "film" happened to be at the time.

Without doing any background checking, I also wonder if some phono stages might actually be overloaded by the considerable output from that cartridge.

For those unfamiliar with the "aliveness" under discussion here, it is a pretty much continuous field of the sort of lifelike sounds that occasionally make us snap to attention with other cartridges (other sources apart from well-rendered master tape, for that matter...). It is "REAL" sound, all right; but to date it has only been gotten at the same sort of cost a connoisseur might ultimately pay for --- heroin.

Best regards,
Paul S

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