Thoroughly “pissed off”
Today has not been a good day at all! As some of you might know I am undertaking a programme of revisiting some ‘classic’ cartridges (both fixed and moving coil designs) and comparing their performance with my current favourite cartridges: the Decca, the EMT and Denon designs.
As part of this exercise I was loaned a cartridge by my friend Dave (known on the forum as DaveM), a Grace F-14/BR/MR. I was very keen to hear this design, as I knew of the F-9E and F-11 cartridges. Indeed I thought this design might be a ‘sleeper’.
Dave hadn’t used the cartridge for a few years since moving to the Goldring Elite mc design; it had lain in its box since then.
Now I like to pride myself that I can install cartridges into headshells with impunity: indeed I have probably done so to some twenty or more cartridges over my hi-fi ‘career’. However it was a loan item, so I though I should be especially prudent and being a fixed coil design, remove the stylus/cantilever assembly from the cartridge before fitting the cartridge body into a spare headshell.
Big mistake! – For whatever reasons the shaft of the cantilever assembly, which is 7mm long (very long compared to those of ADC designs, but short compared to the 12mm of Shure designs) had become stuck. The surrounding plastic cantilever shroud seemed to be made of a quite brittle plastic, or it had become brittle with age, with the result that it broke away from the stub of the cantilever assembly, leaving an exposed and vulnerable cantilever some 4mm long. Nonetheless I was able to fit the cartridge into an SME S2 shell and complete the connections. The entire assembly was then put back into the expanded polystyrene box of the SME shell until such time as it was to be set up in the arm. I have used ‘nude’ cartridges before (one of my EMT cartridges is such) and have used other designs having long and vulnerable cantilevers (such as the Sumiko ‘Blue Point Special’), so I knew that I could at least use the Grace in its present state.
Today I thought I would set it up, but before that I wanted to photograph the cartridge/headshell combination for my eventual report. I’m not sure exactly what happened but in removing it from the polystyrene nest, I must have caught the cantilever and being made of boron it snapped! Had the cantilever been made of aluminium it would have bent, but it might have been possible to straighten it if not too badly bent. Worse still I cannot remove the remains of the shaft. I have tried using tweezers and needle-nose pliers, but to no avail. This is especially maddening as Dave also supplied me with a spare stylus for the Grace F-9E, which might have fitted the F-14.
So you can imagine I’m not a happy bunny at all and am feeling quite contrite. I should say that Dave is remarkably stoical about his cartridge’s misfortune but it has as the title of this thread says: “thoroughly pissed me off”.
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