My new Soundsmith Straingauge cartridge

Spirit - to Lew's point, I was also wondering about the fact that the SG is essentially a solid-state device, and was wondering if you think there's anything detectably "solid-statey" about the sound? Being a tube-o-phile who generally isn't enchanted with even top-notch solid-state gear like ASR, that's one of my key concerns here. I do love Shindo and VAC, and am pretty impressed by these reviews that say the SG has beat components from both those manufacturers. I honestly can't imagine solid-state gear doing that.

Spirit - sorry for the dribbling, but one other question for you - what is your take on the charge that the SG is ruthlessly revealing of bad recordings, with the result that one gets corralled into mainly playing clean, high-quality pressings? Is this also something that's mitigated with proper setup?

Hi Cfluxa. I would really urge you to push for a home demo. Spkrs and cart are the two components that I believe set the character of an analog fronted system the most, and you need to be 110% sure you like that character.
Your 3 points - 99.9% of installs are going to be in a pivoted arm, so the q was more if the SG would work in my ultra short 3" wand linear tracker: there should be no issues with a 9" or 12" pivoted --- I don't have any experience of tube phonos, although I run a tube pre (Hovland HP200) and tube monoblocks (Audion Black Shadow SETs) and am a convert to the sound of glowing bottles: all I can say is that the SG is the most liquid sound I've yet heard from analog, that I don't wish for anything --- and re challenging lps: the consensus is to go for the slightly cheaper "5" stylus profile as opposed to the priciest "6". I believe the "5" comes as standard with the kit. The 6's ruthlessly revealing nature makes it a stellar performer with some lps, and too challenging with substandard ones, whereas the 5's more forgiving nature avoids all this hair pulling. My 5 stylus leaves me wanting for nothing.

Lewm, I see you're a convert to rim drive/direct drive. I myself have moved to direct rim drive w/an equally leading edge air bearing linear tracker. The fast, transparent, essentially neutral SG cart has an amazing synergy, and I've been happy to put away my phono, don't class this as a disadvantage at all. Tbh the carts I was looking at in comparison would have cost me well in excess of the SG entry ticket. And I'm really happy that at the point I need to attend to stylus wear, I'll be shelling out only $400-$600, rather than $3000 on a retip. The SG has replaced a previous SOTA Transfiguration Orpheus into the Tom Evans Groove Plus SRX, no slouch itself.

I have tried to read everything available on the internet about Peter's SG cartridge and am very close to buying one because of their obvious design advantages.

I just have one simple question that I can't get answered.

I understand that a strict adherence to RIAA is not critical to SQ (i.e., +/- .1db is marginally audible and probably over-kill).

I understand the speed, coherence, sound staging,(et. al.) of the SG is well worth a mild response variance from RIAA. Peter has publically disclosed this variance as +/-1db between 50hz and 14khz.

What I don't understand is why there is no disclosure about the magnitude of roll off from 50hz down to 20hz and the magnitude of upward tilt from 14kz up to 20kz both of which are in the audible range and generally not disputed?

I understand that a displacement sensitive design will not require any where near the equalization of a velocity sensitive design and will thereby stay fairly close to flat with no phono-stage equalization; but on the ends of the sonic spectrum Peter admits the tolerance exceeds +/-1db but refuses to quantify this variance. He seems to prefer to simply tell us it doesn't matter. Peter is beyond brilliant, but I just don't get this approach.

This technology is phenomenal and the RIAA variance has spooked many an audiophiles unnecessarily only because it diverges slightly from what is considered the norm. In turn, many technocrats in the industry cant get their perfectionist heads around what they perceive to be a deficiency.

The best speakers in the world have several dB humps and troughs at their cross-over points that are measured and then viewed as "character" by the audiophile community. (Think if an archaic manufacturing practice led to a strict linear response definition at the expense of speed, coherence, sound staging and so on in the speaker market. Seems pretty silly right?)

I don't get why Peter doesn't simply quote variation for the entire audible frequency response range, own it for what it is, take away the big mystery, and rule the world.