Shibata Stylus

Stefanl, "Shibata" styli fall under many titles. They are also known as, "Hyperelliptical," "Fine Line," "Stereohedron," "Modified Line Contact," etc.

This shape is a further extension of the basic elliptical design. The Shibata stylus, originally designed for playing discrete quadraphonic discs, reduces wear by contacting the groove walls in a line rather than at only two points as do the conical and elliptical styli. The edge of the Shibata stylus is narrower than the elliptical stylus and therefore traces even higher recorded velocities.

This stylus shape was originally developed in Japan, and provides much greater contact with the record, offering the combination of high trackability with less record wear. Carefully aligned, this type will offer a better high frequency and improved trackability. This type of cut will give you three times the footprint area within the record groove walls as other stylus cuts. Besides lasting approximately twice as long as other styli, the Shibata stylus tip will, once again, significantly reduce record wear. No stylus cut is written in stone. There are no "standards" that must be followed. So, many manufacturers have their own little variation on the basic styli cuts. Van den Hul, just as an example, takes the Shibata cut one step further with their own "proprietary" cutting geometry.

Happy Listening, Ed.

I dunno 4yanx. It might of been the stereohedron. SQ....CD-4....DBX....man, is that stirring up some memories.

I remember purchasing a Sonus "Dimension 5" MM cartridge at the time that quad was pretty much becoming a dead issue. 78-79-80? The Sonus used the Shibata geometry.

You still have that many quad LPs? You may need to set up another analog rig (maybe a Dual 1228 or a Garrard Zero 100, a 4 channel cartridge, and one of those old Marantz receivers with the little joystick? Maybe 4 KLH model 17s? At that point, I'll send you my DBX LPs and a DBX 222 decoder. You could do a CD-4, SQ, DBX shootout.

The battle of the old technologies. Might be interesting.

In all seriousness, I think that there are still several manufacturers using the Shibata stylus geometry. But, it's geometry is never identical as some manufacturers tweak the cutting very slightly. It's cool to look at the stylus in a cross section. It has a LOT of surface contact. Although, cartridge alignment must become much more critical sonically.

Let me know when you want those DBX LPs. :>) Ed.

Would you like that in DUAL MC or DUAL MM? :>)

http://www.audio-technica.com/guide/other/styli/cart.html#AT440ML

Check out "MicroLine", and let me know where to send those DBX LPs.

BTW 4yanx. I was just trying to figure out what I was using back then as quad decoder/amp. The decoder was some kind of Dynaco, but I forget which model. The amp was a "Lafayette Radio Electronics" 60 watt x4. (it was probably more like 18 watts x 4 @ 5% THD.)

The turntable was a Phillips "212 Electronic" with a Shure "M91QD" quad cartridge. It's dampening/isolation was so horrible that when the cat would walk across the room, it would send 20hz transients through the whole house. Speakers of choice were BIC "Venturi's". If I remember correctly, they were 10" 3 way's. They were cool too. I remember using ELPs "Lucky Man" to make the system feedback until the amp used to go into "protect". That was really cool too.

Man, I was a f***ing idiot.

4yanx, I remember Ohm C-2s. They were a really great sounding speaker. I once heard them hooked up to an old Luxman Class A power amp. They sounded incredible. So did the Luxman.

I also apologize for steering so far off track with this thread. Ed.