I have an old Grado Reference that Peter retipped twice. I finally decided to buy a Soundsmith cartridge and started with the Voice. It was much better than the Grado and with the same stylus/cantilever I was using. I eventually got that retipped during the pandemic and it took awhile. I bought their lowest priced Othello as a temp and was amazed at how close it got to the Voice in terms of resolution and dynamics. I finally upgraded my phono stage to one that could handle low output cartridges and purchased the Sussurro. This is the best cartridge I’ve heard although I haven’t heard any cartridge north of $10K. Check out Peter’s videos on the Soundsmith web site. They’re very educational.
Anybody out there re-cantilever their cartridge with a Soundsmith Contact Line diamond ?
The cantilever on my Dynavector 20x2 is damaged. Dynavector
wants X number of dollars to exchange it. Then I read about Soundsmith's
rebuild option, which is intriguing. A feature aspect of their cantilever
rebuild is their Contact Line Diamond stylus as opposed to Dynavector's Micro
Ridge Nude diamond.
"The Soundsmith Contact Line diamond stylus has three times the contact area in the vertical direction of the groove wall compared to an elliptical shaped diamond".
I thought I was in the clear, but now I'm informed that a Contact Line Diamond stylus with three times the contact area, picks up a ton of surface noise off the record. So much so that the surface noise can become forward on all but the most pristine records. So much so that the surface noise becomes intrusive.
Anyone out there had a Soundsmith modification done to their cartridge, if so which option had you had done, and what's been your expience?