ZYX carbon fibre stylus vs boron

Brand Aside

Cantilever material is selected for a selection of reasons.

One being an Ideal material with suitable properties as the mechanical link. 

Two the material is able to transfer certain frequency more effectively than another. This property allows for Cartridge voicing of the Cartridge to occur. 

Boron tends to enable upper in the range frequencies to become prominent. 

Aluminium has similar effect but this transfers to the lower frequencies. 

CF will no doubt be mechanically sufficient, but how it voices is not known to myself. 

I’ve never heard or researched CF cantilevers, this popped up from 2008

https://www.vinylengine.com/turntable_forum/viewtopic.php?t=11676

Note: At the time, that OP was weeding down to only 50 cartridges.

A few years ago I had a Zyx mid level cartridge with an aluminium cantilever. I liked the cartridge so decided to upgrade to one of the newer CF cantilever cartridges, that was much higher in the range. But I could never get it it to sound quite as good as the earlier cartridge, despite 30-40 hours of running in and trying many adjustments. It just sounded a bit dry and colourless by comparison, so I sold it on.

A bit later I bought a new but older model Zyx cartridge from 2Juki, one of the higher end cartridges with a boron cantilever. This sounded fantastic, much better  than the CF cartridge I tried briefly. There was a return of saturated tonal colours, as well as the speed and dynamics I was expecting. I liked this so much I picked up a second one as a spare.

It is possible that my issue with the CF cantilever was a one-off issue with that specific unit, or may just have been insufficient break in. But I was sufficiently unimpressed with it to avoid trying a CF cantilever again. 

rossb, I think you hit the nail on the head.  That is pretty much how I "hear" carbon fiber parts anywhere near the signal path.  I've got an original UNIverse, with boron cantilever.  It's excellent.