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I was taking lately with the Blue Angel’s Andre and kept asking him about his cartridge’s bass. He got “scared” and asked me if I am looking for overly-anaphased bass, then he asked what kind music I am listening. I perfectly understand why he got “scared” as there are a lot of Morns out there who are looking cartridges to deliver the club’s chest pressure while they listen pop music.

Although my paranoia with bass does sound mature but my reasoning for paying too much attention on cartridge’s bass slightly on other side. There are 5 major characteristics that I care in cartridge:

1)     Quality of the lowers bass.
2)     Dynamic property  relative to harmonics
3)     Amplitude of tonal palette  and the quality of the Absolute Tone ™  (read somewhere at my site)
4)     Cleanness of HF in regard to the lowers bass.
5)     Connectivity of the events

There are many other thighs that I pay attention but those 5 characteristics are mediatory.  My second Stereo tonearm armed with SPU Classic centers around the paragraphs #3, #4, #5. My Reference Stereo tonearm with Shelter 901 is centered on the paragraphs #1, #2, #4… In my view Shelter 901 does a phenomenal job in the #1, #2 and #4.  It is not difficult to see that all of those 3 paragraphs are based upon the Quality of the very very lowers bass.

Why I am so abscessed with the lowers bass. Well, do not take is as a posing but the reason is simple:  because my installation can handle it at the level where I can capitalize on it. It is VERY difficult to get bass in analog. Some turntables do not have it. Some tonearms do not have it. There is nothing that can be done to it – it is just not there. Surely many speakers and amps do not handle bass. Many rooms do not handle bass in right way. Mostly none of the transforms do lowest bass right. In the very same ways many if not most of the cartridges do not develop proper bass and if they do then screw up in many other areas, making good bass unusable. The Shelter 901 has no only great bass but it has phenomenal bass. It is not just only bass but the way how that bass blossoms itself up to the lower midrange.  I was not able to get in on my Micro 5000 and never was able to get it on other arm beside the 3012 with ~30g effective mass. But I am so in lobe, or in addiction to this Shelter’s lowest bass that I hardly see myself to commit adultery to it.

If I stepped away from Shelter 901 then I do ask for a certain level of lowest bass quality. I understand that there is no infrastructure or language to support the subjective assessments of the lower bass but it would not stop me to demand what I would like to get.

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