Lengthy listening session tonight where I was alone in the house = peak dbs in the 115's for hours! The ART20 is a world-class cartridge full stop. It's presentation, imaging, soundstage, clarity, bass, balance, extension, punch, value are unlike any package in a cartridge I've yet to hear. IMHO no serious audiophile with a collection of superb cartridges that each offer something worthy would be without this
Recommended a highly resolving cartridge
Hi all, all tube system that is warm with a good midrange presence inherently. I’m looking for a cartridge that offers high detail / resolution and wide / deep soundstage. This is on a stock SL-1200G TT. On a side note, if anyone has experience “upgrading” the stock tonearm on a G please chime in. I’ve read conflicting reports of the merits of such a move, and while I’m very happy with the tone of my TT and am not looking to move off of it, I am curious about a tonearm swap (must allow for headshell swapping).
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The Audio Technica specific ART design team asked their lone female designer to be the head of the ART20 project. Maybe that is the reason it sounds amazing. The better the turntable and arm, the more it scales up. Has impressed a LOT of people in the industry, barely makes a ripple on the internet discussions. It will be regarded as a future classic. I stuck my neck way out on it as I was, for a while, the only person posting about it. I was knocked out from the first bar of music. I had started a thread on it elsewhere before I’d even received it, just minutes after buying it online from Japan. I went in cold. Not knowing one little thing about it. Truth be told: Before seeing it for sale in Japan I wasn’t even aware of its existence. I was at the time in a hospital bed having lived when the head specialist of the infectious diseases department said that she couldn’t understand how I was still alive. I guess I bought it as a celebration of having survived. Anyway, when I got home and mounted it I was bowled over by it. Posted many posts saying so. I bought a back-up ART20. It will go on my tonearm when the first one is being retipped. I simply can’t express how much more insight this thing draws from the groove. It satisfies both head and heart. It is a very even handed, capable, insightful truth teller. It tells the hi-fi truth and the musical truth as if that was an easy thing. It does Led Zepplin superbly, and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf just as superbly. It doesn’t advocate a style of music. It just advocates playing records. Whatever one chooses. A great turntable would be understood to be better at allowing it to fully bloom(without sounding bloomy). I can’t see why it wouldn’t sound superb in any really good vinyl system. I’m never surprised by people raving about it, because that is what it sounds like. |
From a Koetsu Urushi Vermillion owner: https://www.whestaudio.co.uk/blogs/testimonials/audio-technica-art20-excels QUOTE
Hi.
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Fastricky, your system can achieve 115db SPL in your listening room, without exploding? Did you attend a lot of rock concerts as a lad? I can believe the ART20 is superior to an Urushi, because my Urushi is not my very favorite cartridge, but on the other hand I don’t hear the Urushi (Wajima) as limited in frequency response at either end of the spectrum. It is definitely rich and lush sounding perhaps at the expense of resolution. But then I experience my ART7 as exceptionally resolving but a little thin sounding. I hope you guys run the Urushi with high effective mass. You can’t get it to perform without that. |
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