The long quest to educate one-self about past gems

[LMR-Miguel]

This is not the beginning, nor the end, but right now I'm having a blast discovering the FR-7 cartridge paired with a FR-64s heavy tonearm

If this isn't close to perfection, I don't know what is

The cartridge itself is a bit of an oddball statement from Ikeda San in his Fidelity Research years (the cartridge debuted in 1978 and features a unique internal construction with a cube-like coil former and a push-pull set of redundant coils/magnets per channel). Having heard a Koetsu Rosewood Signature lately in its place using the same arm, this FR-7 is tonaly more neutral, maybe as a slight downside I think the upper registers are not as smooth (veiled?) as the koetsu, while retaining a great deal of sounding natural

 

[LMR-Miguel]

another step within 70s japan: a Supex SD-909Mk2 cartridge, designed and built by Yoshiaki Sugano in his younger years before moving on to create his Koetsu brand.

 

[LMR-Miguel]

Now for direct comparison, the same track on different cartridges (output leveled to the best of my abilities manually with the input pots of my Scarlett interface),

cart #2, Supex SDX-1000 (with silver coil windings):

 

[LMR-Miguel]

cart #3, Koetsu Black Goldline:

 

[LMR-Miguel]

cart #4, Fidelity Research FR-7 (with silver coil windings):

 

[LMR-Miguel]

cart #5, Ortofon SPU Gold Reference:

 

[LMR-Miguel]

cart #6, EMT XSD-15:

 

[ThatStereoSound]

Beautiful system and videos.

 

[LMR-Miguel]

thank you

Beautiful system and videos.