Thinking about switching cartridges.


I have a 2 year old Rega P-10. I'm thinking about switching out the Aphelion 2 for a Hana Red. Is this a waste of money? Your thoughts. Thanks in advance. 

marshinski15

Dear @mijostyn  : With all respect but you are " wrong " on that stylus issue and you have to " learn " a little about and other thing that you need to " learn " is who in hell is Excel the manufacturer of Hana, Etsuro and some other top today and past cartridges. I even own an Excel top of the line under its nomination: Excel and I have many first haND EXPERIENCES WITH CARTRIDGES MADE BY eXCEL. the model I still own in mint condition is realluy a jewel starting with the cartridge top plate that's builded of pure ruby around 0.5cm. 

Regarding cartridge tracking abilities I think that you remember the " hot " discussion in the Dava cartridge thread where @mlavigne Etsuro Gold cartridge he owns ( I think he owns 2 units. ) whe your severe critic to that Excel cartridge was that the tracking is 70u and you said that you never buy that cartridge or any other with inferior tracking to 80u but you need to know that 60u is more than enough to track really fine almost any high velocity LP tracks but the Telarc 1812. Btw, the lavigne Etsuro Gold sample is not the stock one but he posted somewhere a " special " one but he never said in this forum  why is " special.

@tomic601  is rigth: " There is a LOT more to it than stylus shape. ". Mijos your memory is a little " short " about the stylus differences because like 3-4 months ago I posted/shared in other thread 6 of my vintage cartridges that were with Joseph Long retipper. All of those cartridges he only changed the stylus ( cantilever NO. ) and in all cases the stylus came/comes by Ogura.

Well, when you seen one of those cartridges stylus under microscopic photo that Joseph sended inmediatly you shared the stylus of your ( in tghose times ) be loved MSL top today cartridge where you posted that in both cartridges the stylus with both samples under microscope looks way similar and I paid way lower than 300.00 against your over 7K MSL stylus: go figure what you are posting in this thread about the stylus importance.

Yes, my vote for the OP still goes to the Umami Red in that " great " RP10. @bpolleti I thimnk that you need to read the Stereophile review of it where the reviewer compared it very favorable against the SAT direct drive one that set you back over 100K  ! ! 

R.

Agree that the Delos is a very good performer.  But that table will mask that performance and add coloration.  

@rauliruegas I never said you can not replace just the stylus tip of some cartridges. Some manufacturers like Soundsmith mount the stylus themselves. I also think the RP 10 is a great table and arm as long as you put it on an isolation platform. It seems no matter what I say you make hash out of it. There are always exceptions to every generalization.  

@tomic601 I said the Red is a fine cartridge. As I have noted before I do not like the cheaper Hanas below the Blue. In that price range I think people are better off with high output cartridges and phono stages. You get a much better signal to noise ratio. It does not matter how good a cartridge performs if you have a lot of hiss behind it. Of course there is a lot more to cartridge performance than the stylus, I never said there was not. 

The precious part of any analog set up is the record. Noisy, worn out records suck. Well shaped and polished diamonds cause less record wear. The better a cartridge tracks the less likely it is to cause record wear. IMHO 60 um is unacceptable. When a stylus leaves the groove and bounces back and forth it permanently damages the groove. Can a cartridge with a spec of 60 um track most records? Yes, but a cartridge with a spec of 80 um follows the groove better which means less record wear even if the 60 um cartridge is not miss-tracking.

The Delos is a fine cartridge, but at that price point I prefer the Soundsmith Zephyr MIMC. It has better support and rebuild is much less expensive.