Koetsu sound

IMO the Koetsu RSP and Onyx are not slow or musically colored-just sweet, fast, and open like the real thing.
Albert's right, the Onyx is cleaner and clearer but less rich than the RSP. Both the best I've ever heard. Buy one and forget about upgrading for a long time.

This Koetsu and Jan Alberts threads are very interesting. I was able to home audition a store's demos of the Koestu U, RSP and OP in my system and in a friend's before deciding to buy the OP. We both have Graham 2.0 deluxe's so we had the cartridges on separate ceramic wands. He has a level 5 Audio Note/Avante Garde Trio system and I have the Aesthetix, Audio Note and Wislon W/P system. They are both fully tweaked reference systems in excellent listening environments. Each system does have different qualities. We each preferred (and purchased) OP because it demonstrated a faster, more delicate, less noise, and a greater sense of space around the instruments while still having all the musical qualities we were expecting in each of our systems. I was surprised that the OP's sound qualities would be so apparent in two radically different speaker systems, but it was for us. He loads it at 3 ohms by his AN M& Silver Transfer and I have it set up at 10 Ohms in the Aesthetix. Some times I go to 100 ohms, but I seem to prefer the 10 Ohms load. BTW: so now I have four arm wands and have sunk a lot of money in cartridges over twenty years. It one of the easily addictive aspects of audiophilia obsessiveness. I should have two-thirds of that money into real estate.

A general comment here (please indulge me, even though this is a serious discussion so far):

Every time I hear the phrase "Koetsu sound", I think of the work "voluptuous". As an analogy, a famous French chef used to describe wines in terms related to women. Using a similar analogy, Koetsus would be more like Jann Arden than the half-starved, anorexic Celine Dion.

Jaica, I have your exact analog front end except I use the Wheaton Triplanar on the Delphi V with turbo power supply. To my ear you have paired a wonderfully neutral and detailed yet musical cartridge with an equally neutral if slightly less musical arm. I think the Oracle works really best with a synergy between cartridge and arm which you may have inadvertantly missed. Pair a romantic cartridge with a neutral arm, say Koetsu/Graham and you're in heaven. Or, pair a neutral cartridge with a romantic arm, say Helikon/Triplanar and you've attained nirvana, my particular preference. I have used many arms on the Oracle including ET2, SME IV/V, Graham 1.5/2.0, and to my ear the Triplanar is the clear "magical" match for the Oracle. So, keep the Helikon (you really don't want to give up this gem) and trade the Graham for a Triplanar ( the visual improvement alone is worth the effort). Or trade the Helikon for a Koetsu RSP and split the difference. Or keep what you have and enjoy the neutrality of neutrality.