Bad experience with ZYX AIRY 3

Hi Pechtm,

I've also got the Fuji FS (w/o silver base) and have been thinking about seriously upgrading. Like you, I listen to mostly jazz and rock, although classical is recently on the rise in my collection.

I think the Fuji is an absolutely fantastic cart in most respects, but in my setup, it seems to lack to tonal body, weight, and drive of my other three carts(Grado "The Statement", Cartridge Man Music Maker III, and Denon DL-103d) on 70's hard rock or large scale classical like Mahler & Wagner.

In all fairness to the ZYX, though, most of this may be simply a result of less than optimal tonearm matching and/or cart setup. First and foremost, I'm relatively new to vinyl and my setup skills betray that. Second, I have a very unique and rarely used tonearm(Scheu Tacco) that is less than ideal for cartridge swapping/comparison and lacks any form of repeatable, calibrated, fine adjustments. The arm is intensely musical in the right situations, nonetheless.

In this particular situation, the Tacco and Fuji simply may not be a perfect match. Or, I just haven't been able to find the "sweet spot".

*** I don't want people to interpet any of this as a sign that the ZYX Fuji is lacking in any way. My system falls into a 1% category of preferred design and performance criterion(flea-powered, hi-efficiency, single driver w/ extremely rare tonearm) that results are highly unlikely to be the same in the vast majority of other people's setups.***

Regardless, from Doug, Mehran's, and other's remarks around here, the Airy 3-S may better address my personal needs. I'm saving pennies for a different tonearm right now that will allow fine, calibrated, adjustments in all three planes like Doug's Triplanar or one of the used Dynavector 507 mkII's for sale right now. After that, I'll look into forming conclusions about any of the carts I have.

Bada-Bing!!!

Thanks for re-iterating that point, Doug. I've read all the posts in this thread, yet somehow Thom's wise advice didn't hit home with me.

The effective mass of my Scheu Tacco is 14 grams, so I will try 4 grams of blue-tac later this week. Then, work my way up from there over time to see where the improvements stop.

Great news because here are already so many things that Fuji does well, some added body, weight, and authority will take it over the top.

I'll give it a week and report back my findings. The key thing, I think, will getting the blue-tack weight evenly spread on the headshell and rebalancing as you point out.

Many thanks to all the veterans who share their experiences around here.

Cello,

Unfortunately, I never got around to adding the extra mass to the headshell before I sold off the Fuji FS. Work kicked into extra high gear leaving no time at all for audio the last 6+ months. And my current tonearm, although superb sounding, made cartridge swaps and fine tuning a real chore for a newbie like myself.

Sadly, the last time I turned on my system, at all, had to be at least 3-4 months ago. Maybe more. So, I decided a ways back to slowly start selling off the extra components that I don't use. At that point I had - four carts, four amps, three sets of speakers, two turntables, cables, etc. That much stuff sitting around and never getting used is ridiculous.

I'm going to trim things down to one fulltime high-efficiency system that will pack the maximum emotional punch. I'm thinking of actually switching to a Lenco rebuild and selling off my Scheu tables and tonearm.

An occasional downsize is probably good for perspective and general appreciation. Though, I will be back to a ZYX sometime next year - probably one of the Airy's on a different tonearm.