Yea as I said earlier, J. R. knows what he’s doing, so this must be the best approach to optimizing this particular Blue Lace, which by the way looks absolutely beautiful!!
/ Jk
Koetsu
- Thread starter jadis
- Start date
/ Jk
Yes, this cartridge needed 13 degrees of VTA correction and in the range of 9 degrees of SRA correction. The cartridge body interfered, however, so the most I was able to get was 4 degrees of correction. You can also see the 0.9 degrees of azimuth correction. On the upside, the zenith error was less than 1 degree. This error will add extra 2nd harmonic distortion - which is one reason why it sounds as you describe. However, as I say in my videos, you cannot get something for nothing in mechanical transcription. That added distortion comes at the cost of overall clarity and sense of "focus" that gives you the soundstaging and imaging that only analog can deliver. This issue is exacerbated at 33rpm at the inner area of the record. Vast majority of people (including me) don't notice the problem until you remove it - and then you never want to go back to the way it was.
You might wonder why two cartridges that are very different in pricing don’t sound dramatically different from each other. I address this in one of my videos entitled “why do some Audiophiles own multiple cartridges?“
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Ooo Wow .... that's a huge shim that J.R. has had to have made and fitted for some serious cartridge SRA, VTA, Azimuth etc. correction !
Makes you wonder hey that such an expensive cartridge requires such huge corrections !
Maybe the cartridge maker had a bad day the day he was building this cartridge and maybe a few to many Saki's the night before lol
I´d never accept a cart like that.......totally unsellable too IMO
Unfortunately, most of us already have one. The average VTA is 9 degrees too high. The average zenith error is over 3 degrees - even more for the company that makes the stylus/cantilever assembly for Koetsu.
I’ve seen far worse costing more than this one. There is one ~$15k cartridge I’ve seen four times in the lab. Zenith errors were 20.2, 9.9, 14.5 & 4.9 degrees.Ooo Wow .... that's a huge shim that J.R. has had to have made and fitted for some serious cartridge SRA, VTA, Azimuth etc. correction !
Makes you wonder hey that such an expensive cartridge requires such huge corrections !
Maybe the cartridge maker had a bad day the day he was building this cartridge and maybe a few to many Saki's the night before lol
Over 30 people have reported hearing as little as 0.5 degrees of zenith error. It is quite an audibly sensitive parameter
Don’t try such corrections by changing arm height. Doing so upsets multiple vector forces so you’ll never hear JUST the impact of improving VTA. I’ve done videos on this.
If they can make extreme high tech micro/nano chips, why can’t they make a 100% correct and fully functional cartridge which in terms are way bigger then the tiny parts inside a microchip?
Somebody explain to me, please!
Somebody explain to me, please!
Wonderfully low VTA on those but the other issues remain.better stick with my DaVa fieldcoil carts then
Multiple reasons: market doesn’t know about the problem so there is no urgency to fix. Even cartridge manufacturers don’t measure what they buy from Ogura/Orbray/Gyger for all angular parameters. There is also the issue of ossification on the part of the companies mentioned above and the cartridge makers themselves, particularly in Japan. There is also the issue that the volumes aren’t great enough to invest in the expensive technology that would offer consistency.
Uniformly, when people hear their cartridge after optimization, they do not “go back” to previous setups, but the problems do not advertise themselves as needing attention prior to optimization; so pretty much everyone is “happy where they are”. The point being that we don’t know what we are missing until we’ve heard it.
Hi J.R,
Yes I hold my hand up for doing this with my MSL Eminent Ex i.e. raising my Kuzma XL DC Arm Tower up to 7mm from the horizontal tonearm point to get an ideal (as per current guidance etc.) SRA etc. for this cartridge !
I’ve sold my stereo ☝The cartridge you are discussing is a 15k cartridge
@Johan K - are you sending your Blue Lace to JR so he can tell you how bad it is, and your hearing
if it's sound good , it is good
!!! ( To Bonzo .. LOL..)Btw - never heard of a cartridge that expensive.. LOL..!!The cartridge you are discussing is a 15k cartridge
@Johan K - are you sending your Blue Lace to JR so he can tell you how bad it is, and your hearing
if it's sound good , it is good
-As hobby money is no money ☝
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