Which Ikeda 9 Cartridge is this?
Yes my contact in Japan said he died soon after the handover so that does’t contradict ... if he was 86 then as stated in the post he’d be 93 now if still around, too old to be making cartridges!
Back to back the 9TT was/is my preference over the 9C which is why I kept it, it’s quite different though to the earlier 9 series, to me it sounds similar to my old Audio Note Io ... with it’s short cantilever, silver coils and very low impedance and output it’s somewhat similar in design as well and close to too to the last of the Fidelity Research cartridges. Ikeda used silver coils before Kondo did. The 9TT is slightly more real world than the Io though at 2 ohms rather than 1 and 0.16mV output.
The 9TT is a remarkable all round performer where the 9C majored on impact and dynamics perhaps at the (slight) comparative expense of tone and soundstage, which are more important to me than impact given my listening. 9C to me sounded like a massively souped up Decca. I also found the 9TT tracks a little better which you’d expect would be a benefit of a suspensioned cantilever however short. But at this level it’s all about preference. They are all great cartridges.
Out of my current stable the Miyajima Madake remains my favourite music maker/emotion communicator though both Ikedas (old and new) do slightly best it for detail.