high compliance cartridges

[pure sound]

I was reading a page from a technical note someone here had posted a link to about the Transcriptors turntable.

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh107/pure_sound/12incharms.jpg

The author laid out the case against the use of heavier 12" arms in particular their suitability for the, then modern, high compliance cartridges that were becoming increasingly popular. I can understand the reasoning for why heavy arms were unsuitable with those but my question is, how did the high compliance cartridges ever gain a foothold? Ortofon and Denon (amongst others) had been making very good low to medium compliance MC's which for some reason had fallen out of favour by the mid 70's. Yet to my ears, even those older designs; SPU, SL15, 103 etc were (still are) far superior to the various ADC & Shure models that became seen for a while as what was required.

It took the introduction of cartridges like the Supex 900 to re-ignite any interest in lower compliance moving coils. How/why did the market move away from them? Was it all based on marketing or the perceived proficiency of the high compliance designs in negotiating Shure's 'trackability' test records? I realise that such cartridges still have their admirers but it now seems generally accepted that moving coil types offer the best results and tonearms have generally become heavier & more substantial once again.

Can anyone offer any insight as to why the trend (seemingly retrograde) towards high compliance & low mass arms came about? Are there combinations of lightweight arm & cartridge which do offer comparable results to the accepted norm of a heavier arm & MC that people default to now?

[Daniel Quinn]

Apologies irrelevant comment removed , doing to many things at once .

[hifi_dave]

[/IMG]


Can anyone offer any insight as to why the trend (seemingly retrograde) towards high compliance & low mass arms came about? Are there combinations of lightweight arm & cartridge which do offer comparable results to the accepted norm of a heavier arm & MC that people default to now?

High compliance and low mass sort of crept in late 60's. The 'leaders' in cartridge technology at the time were Shure and ADC, both companies great fans of the 'track anything' syndrome. All cartridges were tested and reviewed using various Shure test discs. If a cartridge didn't track the highest level of 'bells', it was deemed inferior. Of course, most MC's at that time wouldn't track jack.

In the early 70's I, in my own little way, tried to promote MC's in the mags I wrote for. I was bowled over by FR cartridges in FR arms and wrote a couple of rave reviews but was called in front of the Editor to be told " no more". Apparently, a senior reviewer of that time had told the Ed that I was talking crap and as he knew far more than me - that was that. For a while.

[DSJR]

The importance of good tracking should never be taken for granted and it's my experience that levels on LP's increased in the 80's. A good working Shure M75 upwards should make a good fist of tracking well in a suitable lowish mass tonearm.

I have two old Supex 900E's. One is a fine tracker and sounds gorgeous in a slightly loudness-switch kind of way. The other is a dog sadly with poor tracking despite the diamond still looking good under a microscope. I think you can thank Linn for buying cheap Grace tonearms, charging the earth for them and fitting them with totally unmatched (in real terms) SD900 cartridges, plonking the whole shebang on the LP12. the whole really was better than the sum of the parts on that particular combination IMO, but despite or because of the hollow and rough colouration this combination has, it did get us thinking away from Stanton 881S's and AT20SLa's - the V15IV just missed the mark for whatever reason as did the ADC Astrion and Sonus Blue, this latter sounding great if you have a good one.

I've said it before, the Technics EPC 205 III is one cartridge I got totally wrong, back in the day. Our systems were so biased around beefy and dull cartridges back then that anything with a more neutral balance was dismissed out of hand because it didn't gell on the LP12 fruitbox and Ittok tonearm we worshipped back then. having heard how good, if small scale, a V15 III can sound these days, I reckon the 205 III would take on a whole new lease of life.

Back to Guy's question. I think the whole HiFi thing in the past was a bit like a pendulum. One manufacturer makes a cartridge that will track at a gramme or less, so the other makers climb on the bandwagon and a whole sub-industry is built on this. Eventually, people get blase and want the next new thing on the block. Linn happened to come along in the UK at least just at the right time when it was all getting silly and rocked a few boats - hard...

Some years later, I remember hearing a good Ortofon SL15E and I liked it very much, despite the treble rise. The MC30 Super I was given, which sounded horrid on the Ittok on a mid 80's LP12, sounds great with a more sympathetic turntable (I use it in the Dual and also for reference, the SL1500).

[walpurgis]

Hmmm, I've owned many of the aforementioned cartridges, Denon DL103 and DL103R, also Supex SD900 and various Ortofon MCs including SL15E, SL20E, S15TE, and SPU and many other MCs and loads of MMs (and Deccas). I have in the recent past used an ADC 10E Mk.IV and 10E MkII alongside a Denon DL103R, which is a very good moving coil cartridge and I have to say the ADCs comfortably matched the Denon for transparency, imaging, detail and overall sound quality. This, via a Graham Slee ERA Gold V phono stage and in the case of the 103R, either an Osawa or Fidelity Research SUT. The rest of my system (all Class A, plus Tannoys) reveals differences (and faults) quite ruthlessly. I know its all subjective, but I reckon that that just dismissing the ADCs along with the Shures (which I don't personally like), is a mistake. Its no good knocking something you either haven't heard or haven't set up properly in a suitable system. I still use my ADCs (including a 26), they are now the only none MC type I've kept, as they sound so good, even alongside my small collection of rather nice ZYX moving coils. Try a good ADC (including the XLM III) in a well matched arm, properly set up, with appropriate ancilliaries and I don't see how you could be disappointed. They aren't perfect, of course, nothing is, but they are damned good.

By the way, the Sonus Blue is a development of the ADC design and sounds very similar.

[Clive]

Acutex are interesting too - damn good sounding, they came in various compliances, I have 420, 412 and 312 at play with at the moment. Compliance with these is 42, 24, 24 respectively.

[Reffc]

There's nothing wrong IMHO with high compliance designs. Two of the best sounding MM's I've ever owned were the Sonus Blue Gold (line contact MI to be picky) and a Shure V15. One of the major advantages if set up well is superb tracking ability and reduced record wear...what's there not to like? There was a move to light mass arms in the 70's but it was really from the standpoint of high mass arms as there (at that time) were only a small handful of decent mid mass units about, so we went from low compliance heavy and rather dull sounding MM's (with some exceptions) and MC's to the opposite. It wasn't long though before some great tonearms started to appear. The 3009 S2R allowed a wide variety of carts to be used and a whole world of medium mass tonearms and cartridges appeared on the market. Fluid damping on low mass arms allowed lower compliance designs to be used quite effectively then too, but whether one considered a low mass arm and high compliance cart or vice-versa, decent set up, as always, was they key to decent sound and trackability assuming a good stylus design.

I've also owned many Linn MM cartridges and all sounded dull and lifeless compared with the Shure. I haven't yet really heard many MM's better the V15 or Sonus Blue Gold even today, not at least unless silly money is spent.

I remember being agog at the specs for the Sonus Blue gold, an early example of a really good line contact stylus and something which took on the Shure V15 mk5vmr for a lot less money. I still have one here. The suspension was a little susceptible to ham fistedness though! I've kept my Sonus in the vain hope that a NOS stylus will pop up and am now looking to buy another V15 to use with my new Hadcock arm shortly to be fitted to the 401.

As has been said, sensible compliance matching and meticulous set up is needed to hear these carts at their best.

The main reasons that high compliance designs never gained a foothold (and here I exclude the V15 which was in production for years so obviously did) was because a vast majority of designs were medium compliance or high compliance and light mass tonearms went out of fashion because your choice of cart was rather limited. It doesn't mean that high compliance carts were flawed, just that there was more to recommend medium mass tonearms as a design not least because they opened up a whole world of cartridge choice.

[Clive]

What definition should should we use for low, med and high compliance? Something like this?

Low < 10 x l0ˉ6 cm/dyne
Med 10 to 30 x l0ˉ6 cm/dyne
High > 30 x l0ˉ6 cm/dyne

[walpurgis]

Those ranges sound a reasonable suggestion. My long departed (and missed) Decca 4RC seemed to have virtually no compliance, it was so stiff. It seemed to track reasonably well though and sounded better than any of the London series I subsequently had. Not had any experience of Acutex designs.

[Clive]

My London Reference likewise seems to have zero compliance in that specs of crud in the grooves make it skip, no matter how often I clean my records with my RCM they re-appear. Tracking of clean records is superb. I came to the Reference via Super Gold and Jubilee.

[rahman]

re: decca compliance, it's worth remembering that they can have quite different lateral and vertical compliance. E.g the mk iv (C4e) has published lateral compliance of 30 x cm/dyne (silly high) and vertical of 6 x cm/dyne (silly low).

what this has meant for me (with a heavy arm) is that it tracks mono lps like a champ (not far off my emt ofd25 in terms of surface noise), but hops around like a bunny on heat when faced with warps (estimated resonance of 4-6Hz with my arm).

[Rare Bird]

Low Mass Unipivots Pick-up arm/High compliance cartridges..End of story for me.

[DSJR]

Hmmm, By the way, the Sonus Blue is a development of the ADC design and sounds very similar.

They did vary a bit sadly, but a good one into a phono stage able to take the massive 28kHz peak is magical..

I like the ZLM myself, the fine-line tip giving a clearer treble IMO. Surface noise not an issue once the diamond is run in..

At the time, I didn't like the XLM III, because it needed a gramme and a quarter to track properly. Now I've got that nonsense out of my system, I've been enjoying mine, even putting one on my Lab 80II for fun. Sounded and tracked fine with no issues with stability in the massive arm either :)

[kcc123]

The XLM III Improved sounds very good in my AT 1100 arm (with straight arm wand) but I slightly prefer the XLM II Super in comparisons. I wonder how they will fare if I partner them with the Mission 774 Original or Hadcock 228?

The Sonus Blue Gold is indeed an excellent cartridge, however, the Technics EPC 205C is the most able cartridge amongst them, in my humble opinion.

[walpurgis]

I still use the Mission 774 arm and have used all the better ADCs in one very successfully and many lower compliance MCs. Just vary the fluid damping accordingly.

[kcc123]

Thanks for your advice, Geoff!