Shure M3D - yet another truly great classic cartridge

[Barry]

The low frequency resonance is something to do with HOW MUCH as well as what frequency I think.

The Dual arm has a tuned counterweight (the main mass is suspended on a spring of somesort inside the cage to cancel out as much as possible any reactions with the chassis suspension) and this minimises the huge rise at resonance apparently. The "handling feedback" I refer to is a structural microphony whan I man-handle the headshell area and with the Pickering it's very severe. The ADC varients don't seem to do this and neither do the V15's or the heavier MC's.

The M3D would have a truly MASSIVE arm/cart resonance I suspect and an SME (even the pre-improved) would struggle to contain this I reckon. Used with a very heavy arm with solid headshell as Marco does, should reduce the resonant frequency as well as the amplitude. The N21 stylus does seem a slightly finer and better damped device altogether, judging from my non Shure replacement.

Regarding arm-cartridge resonant frequency, an old pal of mine (Graham Holliman) used to use a Sansui direct drive (the one with the best W&F figures in an Angus MacKenzie test) with an ADC XLM - the very highly compliant one - and weight the headshell down even further, giving a resonant frequency of 5 Hz. Surprisingly, the thing was quite stable on most discs and on well recorded Decca pressings of things like Kings College Cambrige Choir, the sound through his JBL Paragon clones was palpable, if extremely coloured - the atmosphere of the venue easily felt as well as heard. Inserting a 20Hz filter as many phono stages do made the sound more "mechanical" somehow.......

Ah, if your refering to noises heard just be simply handling the arm/cartridge combination (presumably with the volume turned up), then this is more difficult to explain. The microphony must be due to vibrational forces somehow causing the cartridge to generate a signal. And for that to happen, the stylus/cantilever has to move relative to the body of the cartridge/headshell/arm. This is more likely to happen with cartridges having a high compliance un-damped suspension, but I would have thought it would require a very high cantilever/stylus mass - or have I missed something?

Graham Holliman - now there's a name from the past! Infra-bass and all that. I could never understand how he prevented his low LF tuned arm/cartridge from being upset by the infra bass frequencies he claimed to be able to reproduce, or did he have the TT in another room?

Barry