Cart selection for SL- 1600 TT

naturallight

I'm going to dust off the TT and bring it back to playing again. The question would be cart...

Now over 20+ years i've used it, there have been all kinds of cartrages in there. Now from what i remember (which could be pretty cloudy at this point). Grado stuff seemed to work very well with the Technics. Ortofon, altho nice seems to be too layed back for some reason. All the rest (which i don't even remeber all of them) were passable.
But these are the 2 that stuck out in my mind. I would tend to go twith the Prestige stuff, either the red, or blue.

But if you have any other recomended carts, in $150 price range, please let me know...thanks.

TNHNDYMAN

I'm using an ortofon 2M red and a Shure M97xe with great results. If you can find any old stock Shure V15's they work well. Alot of fans of the Denon 103 series. Personally I'm not sure if I will go up the Ortofon food chain or try a shibata tip from Jico for the Shure. Love my 1600, but wish it were a MkII so I could adjust tonearm height.

naturallight

Now It's funny you metioned the ortofon 2M red..thats on sale at neddle DR. The last Ortofon I bought (lots of money 20 years ago..LOl) Just didn't thrill me that much..was expecting alot more for the price. How do you find it compared to the Shure???

mhardy6647

V15 is really too high compliance for that arm; M97xe is pretty high compliance too but (IMO and IME) sounds good, is reasonably priced, and works adequately well in such an arm (we have one in a Pioneer PL-12D, with a pretty similar, medium-mass arm).

I use a DL-103 in a Technics SL-Q2 (pretty similar arm to yours) and I love it (idiosyncratic, but it sounds like real music; terrific price/performance ratio if you ask me), but, truth be told, the arm mass is not really high enough for an optimal system resonance with the very low compliance and really needs a higher mass arm for best results. The DL-301ii is probably a better match, at least on paper... but it's significantly pricier.

You might want to also consider the Grado cartridges. I like the sound of them, although they're not the best-tracking cartridges out there, and they can suffer from hum issues on some turntables.

TNHNDYMAN

Mr H is on point as usual. For me the 2M red is a little more dynamic in the high end and the shure seems to show better bass response some would say mid range hump which makes you think it is more bass heavy. I will admit I am new to vinyl and can't help you much with the compliance issues. I've done my share of reading on vinyl engine, AK, and other forums so I'm learning.

I'm not telling you to ignore the cart and arm issue, but I will say either of the above will work and give you something nice in the affordable category to listen to as you acquire more vinyl and learn the in and out's of proper set, azimuth angles, cap loading thru stand alone pre's ect... you can certainly improve your setup.

Short term I would get the Shure and enjoy the music as you learn more you can make a better informed choice based on budget and needs for long term enjoyment.

[Deleted User]

Hello T-man,
Funny you should mention the M97xe with the Jico replacement stylus, I was looking through some of the previous TC3000 checkouts I've made and I found the original M97xe compared with the replacement Jico. This was on a nicely modified AR XA and the cartridge output increased from 3.6/3.4mV to 5.1/5.3mV with the Jico (a stronger magnet in the Jico produced a greater output). Tracking went from 79/75 for the stock Sure and 80/80 for the Jico, a slight improvement. The frequency response improved through the 5kHz through 15kHz region with the Jico within .5dB both channels. The Shure is a fine sounding cartridge and with the Jico it becomes better. I would recommend keeping the tracking brush down unless it is used in a low mass tonearm, the resonance was very tamed in the AR with the brush down.
Cheers, Ken

naturallight

Wow..ok you just jumped the price up to close to $400 with the DL 103..so thats out of my range..LOL

I have 10 crates of records that have been played since the 60's......Once i get the spin clean I will see how many are really usable at this point. I used to have all the setup stuff, gauges, Zero stat..all that stuff. But thats all long gone now. So i have to rebuy X amount of it.

I did not find a Hum problem with the Grado stuff, at least the carts i had. The Ortofon stuff just did not thrill me. It seemed to lack the whole dynamic the Grado stuff had, for some reason. The tracking issue..I don't remember.

But the "compliance" issue...you kind of lost me on that. Not sure what your takeing about.???

TNHNDYMAN

I'll probably put my foot in my mouth here, but my LIMITED knowlege is that you would use a low compliance cartridge with a high mass tonearm and a high compliance arm with a low mass tonearm. There are calculators on vinly engine that you can put know values such as tonearm length and other measurements to solve for unknown values. Their site also give great info on most stock tonearms that came with the table you have as well as info on some of the carts.

It get's complicated (to me at least) but don't let that keep you from diving in the pool. Like I said before start with a budget cartridge, enjoy the music and prepare to spend some time learning the details as you go. It's like anything else in life, you can obsess over every detail and lose sleep over it or you can just enjoy.

There are lots of knowledgable members on this forum that can guide you down the path alot farther than I can.

Scompracer, mhardy, doctorR and many others-- just search for posts about turntables and see who provides input regularly.

[Deleted User]

Tnhndyman is correct, the springiness of the cartridge's stylus suspension and the effective mass of the tonearm/cartridge form a resonant system. Think of a weight on the end of a spring how it will bounce up and down at a certain frequency. If you increase the amount of the weight it will bounce at a lower frequency. In record playing you want the resonant frequency to be somewhere between 8 and 12Hz, too low and it will have trouble tracking warped records, too high and it will start effecting how bass information sounds. If we give an approximate effective mass for the Technics of 10 grams and we try and get the resonant frequency at 10Hz then we would look for phono cartridges around 25x10-6cm/Dyne. The Grado cartridges have this dynamic compliance. You could also use the Shure, but with the damping brush in the down position (the damping brush acts like a shock absorber does for a car, reduces the effects of warps).
I hope this is helpful information.

naturallight

Well i have used TT's since the 60's...LOL and I've had a number of them. From what i remember....Pretty much if you can balance the cart, with the tone arm, aligin everything right, then put the weight recomended for the cartrage
you should be good to go. The "compliance term" I just don't remember..Unless there saying the weight of a certain cartraige dose not play well with this tone arm..as it's really to heavy..or should be placed farther out then the tone arm can reach. Or at least something like that. But the term is something i don't know about..or at least was not coined back in the day.

naturallight

Thank you kenneth.....that explains a lot. Pretty much explains why the Grado sounded better then the ortofon....
Thank again..I will go with the Grado.

mhardy6647

Mr. S's explanation's excellent; there are also plenty of discussions on the topic to be found on teh webs. Some examples...
http://www.soundfountain.com/amb/ttcartridge.html
http://www.ortofon.com/support/cartridgetonearm-resonance-frequency

Whether you knew it "back then" or not, matching of arm mass and cartidge/stylus/suspension compliance has always been very important... but fashions change - in the 1950s and into the 1960s, arms were heavy and compliances were low (the Denon DL-103 was introduced to the market ca. 1962). By the late 1970s, low-mass arms and high-compliance cartridges were in fashion. Today, arms tend towards medium masses and so the ultra-high compliance cartridges of the 1970s (e.g., the best ADC models, the aforementioned Shure V-15 family, the AKGs of the time, and Peter Pritchard's post-ADC Sonus brand) really aren't well suited to most of today's arms.

Today, moving coil cartridges are popular; these tend to be moderate in compliance and work well with today's popular arms. The aforementioned DL-103 is very low compliance by modern standards and will perform best in a massive arm. They're OK in the Technics arms, though. FWIW, not that long ago, it was possible to pick up new DL-103s (not even grey market) from an outfit in Florida for 118 smackers... that's how I got mine, and that is what prompts my bang-for-the-buck comment earlier.

naturallight

To be blunt..I don't remeber what it was called back then....could have been called supention spring..which made more sence at the time. But otherwise i get it now. Thanks for the info.

mhardy6647

They called it "compliance" :-)
This is from a 1961 catalog, for example...