What innovative, unconventional cartridge designs can you recommend?

Can I have my thread back now, please!

Approximately 50% of the OP is dedicated to DS Audio and plenty of post after are about DS Audio.

This Thread is deliberate in bringing DS Audio into the limelight.

The Tiger is caught by the tail, there is little control left, hang on for the ride.

What I have learnt is, within this thread there is a lot of conjecture about DS Audio.  As there are not too many contributors who have the complete information and really do know the products capability.  

Can I have my thread back now, please!

Thank you.

The only good thing about some of the posts is that if I read them before bedtime I'm off to sleep very quickly..

@pindac 

This Thread is deliberate in bringing DS Audio into the limelight.

The Tiger is caught by the tail, there is little control left, hang on for the ride

As the original poster, I was interested in hearing about DS Audio and how it compares with TOTR (I'll spell that out for politeness' sake - Top Of The Range)  moving coil.  I mentioned the Audio Technical ART-1000 so that's 50% each.

It pretty quickly became clear that the compromises with low output moving coil (LOMC) between getting a very low effective tip mass and sufficient signal for reasonable signal to noise ratios, simply do not apply to DS Audio's current implementation of optical.  DS Audio has both lower effective tip mass and vastly greater signal - hundreds of times more.

I have now put my hard-earned where my analysis led.  I am not opposed to optical equalisers from sources other than DS Audio and in fact have purchased a SoulNote Equalizer rather than one from DS Audio.  Before starting this thread, I had heard of Mr Nixie but I had not heard of SoulNote!  It is hard to compare a fully balanced equaliser with no negative feedback and no operational amplifiers, that weighs 9.5 kgs, with a cigarette packet-sized unit.

Neither my DS003 cartridge nor my SoulNote are anywhere near TOTR in their lineups. Nevertheless, my SoulNote follows the RIAA curve within 0.3-dB.

I think it is worth mentioning that one of the functions of an equaliser for DS Audio is to supply DC power to the 3 diodes in the cartridge.  Any ripple in that power supply will surely imprint on the diodes' output.

The TOTR DS Audio equaliser is a two box system weighing 40-kgs which together contain about 5 Farads of high-grade capacitors.

I am expecting the sound to be analytical (or CD-like) and I may not like it.

Meanwhile I am about to plug my SoulNote in for the first time, using moving magnet cartridges and a cheap pair of XLR cables while I wait for my DS003 cartridge to reach Australian shores.  Stay tuned ....

Speaking from experience, the tracking ability of this cartridge is amazing. Passages that used to make me cringe because I knew distortion was coming, are now crystal clear. Rickie Lee Jones comes to mind.