My new arm arrived this morning. Fantastic service from Hugo at Ammonite Acoustics.
Hugo first sent the arm to J7 at Audio Origami for an Ikeda Silver rewire and VDH silver cartridge tags. J7 turned the job around in 48 hours so respect and my thanks to him for another great job well done!
I bought this to replace my ageing Jelco SA-750D (also rewired by J7). I also decided to upgrade the armboad at the same time and so fitted one of Hugo’s lovely modular items.
Installing the armboard and arm was very straightforward. One the armboard was in and the deck levelled etc it was a cinch to get the arm installed.
I decided to stay with the supplied Jelco headshell (with the VDH tags) rather than the Denon PCL-300 I was using in the 750. The geometry of the 850 is slightly different to the 750 and it was easier to set up the DL-S1 to desired null points with the Jelco headshell.
The 850 is beautifully engineered (even got a thumbs up from J7) and IMO looks great on the Technics.
The “locking” arm tube holder is welcome - not least as the knife-edge bearing makes for a “looser” arm than the 750.
All the tech specs are on Ammonite Acoustics site in the Trade area so I won’t repeat here.
Once I’d got the DL-S1 cartridge dialled in (1.5g VTF - 1.5 bias using the Soundsmith method) tracking was rock solid using the HFN disc.
Sound wise and bearing in mind I’ve only had it running for about 5 hours it is very impressive and enjoyable- a definite step up from the 750. The soundstage is bigger and fuller - better clarity and focus - there is more energy and drive - more emotion and “clues” as to how the artists are actually playing/performing. There is definitely more low level information being retrieved in low and high frequencies. Even on old faithfulls like Dark Side I am hearing stuff for the first time! Tone-wise I’d describe it as slightly “sweeter” than the 750 but I suspect this is the silver rewire talking. Overall it’s more musical and gets nearer to the “real thing” I guess.
Highly recommended.
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