I got last week two emails and one this morning, from people who read this thread and ask me basically the same question: Romy, do you recommend the Ortofone Jubilee? The people who did it before and received from me no replies or the replies with suggestion to go screw themselves know how it works. People have no concept how much I do not care what you people consider to purchase or willing to use. The poor audio freaks are so accustom that any knowledge in audio get converted into a tradable commodity that they do not feel that the “conversions” might not be necessary…. One of the emails last week even made me to laugh and the person asked do send him to hell as he is a classical music listener. At the same time the people do not ask proper questions in proper formats, which would make extending the recommendations interesting. They just want somebody stick their damn noses into something.

Anyhow, in case of Ortofone Jubilee I think I do need to raise my voice and extend an official recommendation. Here is comes…

I would like to state a strong OPPOSITION to a recommendation for people buying Ortofone Jubilee cartridges. This my disapproval of Ortofone Jubilee does not derive from the Ortofone Jubilees sonic performance – if you read the thread then you will see that I am pleased with Jubilee’s sound. However I feel the current production of Ortofone Jubilee is defective (search my site with word “Compliance Noise”). I do not insist that the Compliance Noise is something that is hugely auditable during playback but it shell not be there in new cartridge. I do not know what Ortofone does with it and according to the US Ortofone distributor no one complained about it, even though he himself verified the problem with the cartridge that I returned to him. This kind of proves my view that the majority of people in audio are deaf Morons but it does not help to Ortofone to fix the problem.

So, if you are in Ortofone realm then complain, vocally and persistency, as it is the Ortofone problem and with your voice they will continue to do whatever they what instead of whatever is necessary.

Somewhere in the thread there was mentioning of the London Reference cartridge. The Positive Feedback this month published a review of the needle.

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue48/london_reference.htm

The review is idiotic in my view, but no different than the people who have a need to write those products reviews. However, since there is no information about cartridge widely available I think it would be worth to read it for whomever care. Also, the London cartridge distributor with whom I spoke on the phone and who sounded like a Moron in my view looks like not longer a distributor and he when back to sell car and graveyard lots. Hey, without him the needle even might to sound better, who knows…

Paul S wrote:

Adrian, I have not heard this specific cartridge, but the "alive" thing Levi went on and on about certainly rang a Decca bell for me.

Paul S wrote:

Looking at the photograph of the cartridge, there are some screw heads visible.  On a Decca I remember, the screw on the side of the thing was some kind of adjustment screw.  Is that also the case with this new cartridge?

Paul S wrote:

Somehow, I did not realize until reading Levi's review that this cartridge puts out 5 mV!  I have to admit, I like the idea of eliminating another transformer, along with its connections.  One could theoretically hard-wire that cartridge straight to the network.

Stitch wrote:

It would be much easier to name some useful reviews instead to rant about written BS which became standard today.

Romy the Cat wrote:

In contrary to any other equipment I feel that cartridges are well benefited in comparative reviewing… The Cat

Romy the Cat wrote:

... People have no concept how much I do not care what you people consider to purchase or willing to use...They just want somebody stick their damn noses into something.  .... that the majority of people in audio are deaf Morons ... The Cat

Romy the Cat wrote:

Are you in need of a professional help? Are you divorced? Are you pissed because you are out of work? Are you drunk and wasted? Are you arrogant son off a bitch? Are you on drags?

N-set wrote:

I'm wondering if the current 901mkII holds the candle? (...which would be against the industry practice, but...) It can be gotten for $1500 in some japanese online shops, but there does not seem to be much feedback around.

The problem is that no one, at least among the people I might trust has any area about absolute truth regarding Shelter. People might get some relative truth regarding one of another cartridge but they are not able to grasp the thinks all together. I spoke with Shelter US distributor who suppose to know something about Shelters and he was absolute idiot, not only ignorant on the subject but not even able to support a conversation about cartridges, I think I have written about it before.

It is possible that more advanced version of Shelter, after the 901, are better and it is also possible that they are worse. I have seen a few years back some kind of US publication when they compare the Shelter 901 to 90x and 900 and found that the newer version worthy. I do not remember what it was but there were in there also some contradiction in the article that made me to discard the findings.

The most important question would be however: how Shelter holds it absolute level of quality/sound. Let pretend that they took the 12 year old 901 cartridge and rename if to the Shelter 9000 with price tag of $5000. Then they took the old 501 cartridge and re-name it to 901. With the industry that has no quality control and no reviewing control then can get away from absolutely anything and have no liability for what they do. I do know some manufactures who absolutely intentionally secretly dropped the performance level of the existing on-going products since the products had developed a reputation. It was not just a “drop in sound” but it was a drop from being absolutely one of the kind super-products to be juts garbage that deserved to be wasted. There is nothing prohibitive for Shelter to do the same, nowadays they can make the any Shelter for $3.59 per cartridge in china and write on the cartridge body any numbers they want. 

I am not accusing Shelter for going juts hat but I know that whatever fuck up might be made by the industry will be made by the industry. so, I would not trust to any cartridge by any bran or any model and would be evaluation myself the very specific cartridge I want to by. I remember what I was buying my current Jubilee I was getting it from VERY reputed company – not high you can go in reputation and stability of results as Otofone? So, I still got two cartridges with two different sounds.

So, I personally do not believe anything ever told about cartridges and I do not believe that cartridges might be described by brand or by model. I would say even 10-15 years ago it was but nowadays cartridges pool is a jangle and I have zero trust to anybody and to anything. The only thing that makes me gratefully in all of it that I am not in cartridges market….