Blummin el Marco! Thank you for that!
I must admit to having a preference for cartridge work over all else I do.
Cartridges have always fascinated me and it's a great sense of achievement when I can resurrect someones pride and joy. Quite a few cartridges are just crying out for improvements with better cantilevers and tips. Cost cutting and market sector placement being reasons why some cartridges/styli are manufactured the way they are.
But then you have the oddball vintage gems that get rediscovered such as the G800. I still surprises me how good this cartridge can sound. Maybe it was just a fluke that it performs so good with modern equipment.
When I tried the bog standard G800 it seemed obvious it had merit, but just needed some work. The nickel cantilevers I make were a fortunate experiment.
I was trying to find a material for cantilevers which did not suffer from some of the flexing issues hollow aluminium ones suffer from. Hollow aluminium cantilevers flex an awful lot if observed under the microscope. Boron is superbe but incredibly difficult to obtain. Ruby and sapphire are even better but there is a longevity issue with these and must be treated with great care.
I have more plans for the lowly G800. I have a spare body here and will re-wind the coils to create a low output version to see if this will improve its performance even further, plus I would love to try a ruby cantilever and Fritz Gyger S tip also. This is a very expensive upgrade, but I think it was proved on Saturday the potential this cartridge has.
Going back to the nickel cantilevers, I am more than welcome to offer this to people wishing to experiment on their cartridges. Nickel cantilevers have to my ears a very natural sound being somewhat of a halfway house between alloy and boron. I make these cantilevers from scratch and thus are pretty time consuming to manufacture.
Given time, I will have at least one completely new cartridge hand built from the ground up. If there is anyone out there with the facilities to help with a cartridge body please get in touch!
I am training someone at the mo to do some of the turntable work so I can spend more time on cartridges.
