What innovative, unconventional cartridge designs can you recommend?
Most cartridges have a stylus and cantilever where the transducer (magnet, iron or coil) sits on the far end of the cantilever. What other designs are there?
I am mindful of two designs which put the business end right on top of the stylus. The first is the moving coil (MC) Audio Technica AT-ART1000 which places two tiny coils, each 0.9-mm diameter, with eight turns of wire directly above the stylus. Australian price is about AUD-7000 and there apparently is a newer model, slightly less exxe. the ART1000X. This has square coils for a bit more output, and threaded mounting holes.
A downside is that stylus replacement involves a factory maintenance program and the Australian website page describing this service does not exist.
Another design is optical, exemplified by DS Audio's range. While these still need a stylus to trace the groove, the signal is produced by reading the intensity of light produced by a Light Emitting Diode (LED) hitting two sensors. Between the LED and the sensors are two 'shades' mounted above the stylus which change the amount of light as the stylus vibrates. These cartridges need a special "photo-stage" to replace the conventional phono-stage which is an additional expense.
Australian prices including photo-stages range from AUD-2,150 for the DS-E1 to the DS Master 3 at approximately AUD-40,800, which is a bit outside my price range! Where is the sweet spot?
What other way-out designs are there?
@pindac I interpret the following sentence
to mean "You are 100% welcome to try and negotiate our price", whereas the follow-up
means "We will ignore your silly offer and give you $100 off". As for the "!", recently I was corresponding with a business in the UK. I had to make an actual effort to not use exclamation marks or emojis! 😃 |
From where I sit, it seems there are more different optical cartridge equalizers on the market than there are optical cartridges. Is that a fair conclusion? Essentially, only DS Audio make optical cartridges, but at least 3-4 different companies make equalizers. Seems like the market for them, which depends upon ownership of an optical cartridge to begin with, is oversubscribed. |
I'll address your contribution first! Exclamation mark, sorry @devinplombier..
With all due respect, this is absolute drivel at least as far as DS Audio cartridges are concerned. To make it crystal clear, any Equalizer can be used with any cartridge. The need for a 'special' Equalizer arises because the output signal from the cartridge depends on the position of the stylus, not its velocity. If I remember my schoolboy mathematics, velocity is the first derivative of position. Fluxions according to Newton. If you think of a bass note, optical cartridges produce their maximum output where the excursion of the needle is greatest. Makes sense, right? But electro-magnetic cartridges produce zero output at that point. My understanding is that other cartridge types also need 'special' equalisers, for example strain gauges. The reviews I have read suggest the resultant sound quality depends more on the Equalizer than the cartridge. All the mainstream Equalizers include RIAA equalisation. In fact, DS Audio has published a circuit schematic to allow anybody with the skills to build an Equalizer. I know you are keen on one non-mainstream device which passes its output to an external RIAA equaliser (normal phono-stage or pre-amp) through its MM input but this adds all the noise associated with MM gain. Sorry, does not do it for me ... |
Absolutely fair from my couch too. Although, as others have pointed out, there have been previous attempts at making optical cartridges, the only real player in the market at the moment is DS Audio. For equalisers, my reference is here DS Audio which currently lists 13 manufacturers and 21 models. The list seems to grow almost by the day. DS Audio currently makes six stereo cartridges and six (I think) mono variants of the same. There will be older models as well. DS Audio only seems to list third party manufacturers with credible world-wide distribution networks. There are many more makers, especially in Europe, who lament not getting on to the list. Only time will tell whether the market is oversubscribed. If @pindac keeps up his diatribe ... |
