What innovative, unconventional cartridge designs can you recommend?

@dover 

I would trust the AnalogMagik reports more than lunatic ravings

Me to! 

AnalogMagik does far more than @pindac 's rather incomprehensible dribble suggests:

AnalogMagik Reports are snippet of products released into the Cartridge Market, what is read, is for the best, if worn like a loose garment, it should not be attached to being an authority on the Quality of released products

In particular, they run extensive turntable and cartridge tuning and rebuild services - see Will AnalogMagik work with my equipment? which includes: 

12) Can you give me some hints as to what cartridges, tonearm, and turntable combinations will be easier to measure incremental changes?

For cartridges, we find My Sonic Lab, Haniwa, Air Tight, Ortofon, Lyra, and Phasemation to be some of the brand names that stand out as having very consistent manufacturing quality.  Optical cartridges such as DS Audio also measure very well. These brand names also have very low channel imbalance, which makes crosstalk analysis a lot more accurate.    Two names that I find to be very responsive to adjustments, are MSL and ZYX

On the other hand, we find some other cartridges to measure very poorly, some have significant channel imbalances.  Other Cartridges with stylus zenith issues, channel imbalance out of the factory, and various suspension problems tend to be less responsive to adjustments, or they may exhibit very mediocre numbers.  The bottom line is if the cartridge is bad, do not expect to detect incremental changes easily.

Tonearms that have high machinery precision, with fewer wobbly parts tend to provide efficient energy transfer, they tend to register much lower baseline distortion levels.    Tonearms with lots of moving parts that fit together poorly tend to measure very poorly.

For turntables, those that have better isolation tend to measure a lot better.     Idler wheels, rim drives, and older tables with lots of mechanical moving parts tend to measure very poorly, they produce a lot of vibrations which makes baseline distortion levels high.    It is difficult to detect incremental changes with these tables.

Come in, @billstevenson

@pindac Stated " An Optical System on a modern design Optical Cartridge measures shadow. How does Materials, such as the use of a Diamond Cantilever effect the Shadow being read??" 

 @dogberry Stated " If you say it doesn't matter for an optical cartridge, why should it matter in any other kind of cartridge?"

Is there not, an Ocean of difference between my inquiry ?? and the notion that I am making claims "it doesn't matter". I have no recollection of stating the materials used do for the structure of the Cartridge do not matter. The inquiry is how does  the materials selection influence for the better the Optical Read Technology.

I am taking my inquiries away from the Gon Analog Section, an alternate source of info is to be consulted on this same inquiry.

I can't but help sense I am met with a wall of infinity bias, where the unconscious collective thought to make a strong challenge is stifling the thought process on the comparing the two technologies requirements, to present modulus data and then convert the data to an electrical impulse.

I now need to discuss this with an individual not carrying prejudice and is unstifled in their thinking. I can only constructive and valuable dialogue as the outcome. I really an open to learn something new on about these two technologies.

Whatever the outcome I will post it on here, using my best endeavours to retain all pertinent information passed on. I am sure there are a selection of onlookers quite interested in discovering more than what is to be seen in the recent posts.

As for one entity non affiliated to the Manufacturer having been able to assess a volume of Cartridges for the Quality of their Stylus alignment on a Cantilever. Where the volume of inspections would be of a number that strongly suggests a very accurate assessment can be produced for the evaluation of Overall Quality is quite fantastical as a notion.

The only entity able to undertake such a inspection of a Product and produce an accurate evaluation is the Manufacturer. 

In relation to DS Audio and the reports seen from my investigations over the past 4 years. I do believe Cartridges with poorly aligned Stylus are being distributed.

Again I am not the expert who was confident enough to publicly broadcast the following:

When I reported on the information I was privy to. Which had been supplied by one of the most respected Technicians from the range of Cartridge Repair Services I know. Which was a report informing on ZYX Dampers failing as a functioning Damper shortly after being in service for approx' One Year.

This report repeated on the Gon by myself, was never ever challenged. I recall one Gon Member being grateful for the shared info, as ZYX was on a shortlist. 

What is for sure, is that the ZYX Models this has been witnessed occurring on are not all to be with a usage life that is limited to One Year only. Plenty Models remain  in use, which will according to the Technician be with a Damper that is strongly suspected to have failed.

I strongly suspect there are Cartridges with this condition, that could easily still have a 500 Hour+ life left in the Cart', if the Cartridge owner is using 1000 hrs as their guideline. 

Don't move the goalposts! I was responding to your statement:

I am saying why does a modern design Optical Read Cart', need a Diamond Cantilever or other materials renowned for being exceptional when used as conduits for managing transferred kinetic energy. 

The answer is because before the transducer the signal exists only as physical vibrations in the stylus and cantilever.

A serious and, I believe, accurate answer to your question. But if you just want to argue for the sake of it, I shan't bother any further.

@pindac 

This is an interesting conversation. One point I struggle to understand is why attributes, characteristics and materials almost universally considered critical to the performance of phono cartridges would matter less to optical cartridges. 

As you pointed out, an optical cartridge's sensor essentially "reads a shadow" projected onto it by a beryllium shade.

Thus, where and when the shade allows light to strike the sensor is critical to the fidelity of the end sound, with the stylus, cantilever and suspension being the (100% mechanical) apparatus that determines the timing and position of the shade relative to the sensor.

In other words, why would the composition and construction of the apparatus in question matter less when the sensor is optical? I apologize if I missed the answer to this question in one of the earlier posts.

@pindac 

"Assumptions are made and most assumptions are wrong."

Once again, you quote an unnamed individual of your own acquaintance as an authority!  I would remind you that in science, and especially physics, there are two sorts of assumptions.

The first type lists the axioms that are held to apply to the question being asked.

The second type is an assumption (called a guess by renowned physicist Richard Feynman in his lectures Richard Feynman explains science in 60 seconds. : r/videos) about a solution to the question.

A good example is Isaac Newton’s Laws of Motion. In his Principia, Newton sets out his underlying assumptions - the universe is based on a three-dimensional recti-linear system of Cartesian coordinates and time is the same everywhere.

Then he makes a guess - an object travels at constant speed in a straight line unless acted on by a force.

This guess is so far from everyday lived experience that it must have been quite shocking at the time.  For example, Icelanders believed the sun was pulled across the sky by two dogs.  But Newton calculated the consequences of his guess for two bodies attracted by the force of gravity, and they turned out to be remarkably accurate.  He even wrote exact equations for their motions.

It took hundreds of years before a young Albert Einstein challenged Newton’s axioms, and postulated that time is not a universal constant, and that his 4-dimensional space-time is bent by gravity.

Note that Newton’s laws of motion are still used without modification in almost all use-cases, except for the clocks in the satellites used for global positioning systems (and for some experimental physics).

By the way, nobody has ever managed to formulate the exact equations for three bodies attracted by gravity.  Newton's assumptions were slightly wrong in extreme situations but are still extremely useful.

PS: The university I attended in the UK insisted on a pass in O-level Latin even for science degrees.  Maybe so we could read Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica in its original form. Or more likely as a form of torture