What innovative, unconventional cartridge designs can you recommend?

It is presumptuous to think that Ortofon is the only companies to address non linearities in magnetic fields. In fact magnets themselves are non linear and generate phase issues when used in an electrical circuit, so the FSE technique may help, but it can't eliminate the fundamental non linearities induce by magnets/poles/coils.

I have a Glanz MFG61 moving flux cartridge which has had the suspension, coil and magnet arrangement specifically designed to ensure linearity is maintained no matter what position the cantilever is in.

It has some attributes in common with the DS Audio in that it uses magnetic flux to cut the coil directly ( no poles involved ) whereas the DS Audio uses the shaded plate to cut the light without the intrusion of poles. Some of the patents ( Mitachi ) are here -

https://patents.google.com/patent/US4072823A/en

The Glanz MFG61 sounds more like a moving coil than any other moving iron, induced magnet, moving permalloy etc.

From my own experience, the Glanz MFG61 moving flux makes most of the top Ortofons sound extremely coloured and course. It is one of the most neutral cartridges I have ever experienced, extremely linear in its response.

As a professional I am a fire fighter for Companies that work in Construction Projects where Package Values typically exceeds £50M, the projects that usually are the structures that create a City Scape for a Major City.

When I am introduced there are usually forensic analysts of the Contract and Programme with a regular reporting to the Groups most senior personnel.

My role is to undo all the blockers and give description of what is the causes of the project arriving in the current state,

This reminds me of when I project managed a major IT upgrade for an English multi-national some years ago. The UK company planned for 2 years of analysis to identify the companies needs. They had already spent 1 1/2 years in planning.

I put in a complete new system in 6 months, completed everything required for full blown IT system that supported MRP manufacturing, ISO approved to medical device standards, multi country distribution - even included IT systems to support the transport of live skin in a temperature controlled environment from the US to the other side of the world and delivered to the operating table within 36 hours anywhere.

Went back to the UK a year later after we went live across the southern hemisphere, they were still working on their plan.

That's why the UK is in such an economic mess.

I found the slang definition of FSE to be "Funniest $h!t ever", which makes sense as I read some of these posts.

As a reminder to some, ESL means "English as a second language". Some of these posts are very hard to understand, not because of the science, but rather because of the grammar and syntax.

RB, in mentioning optical attenuators, I meant no slur on optical transducers. Optical attenuators that can replace resistive attenuators (meaning attenuators that rely upon actual resistors in the signal path) have been available for quite a while, and they’re very good sounding, with the caveats noted. I am very curious about the DS cartridges and I hope open minded.

@lewm 

I don't think DS Audio uses optical attenuators ...