DAGOGO Commentary: One Cartridge for All, Part 3 (final)

One cartridge for all LPs, Part 3 (final)

[Read One cartridge for all LPs, Part 1: Denon DL102, Part 2: Decca]

Phillip Holmes

May, 2008

“It takes some patience and practice, but I notice big gains in noise performance when I modify these cheap headshells by soldering the wires to the headshell. Obviously, a better headshell would give better results, but this is pretty similar to the headshells used with SME 3009, and is probably superior to the headshell on the Decca International arm (surprise! a piece of plastic!). Another option is to connect one ground wire and add a jumper at the preamp to combine both grounds (I like this idea least of all). A third option, that I’ll get to in a little bit, is to do the connection in a box, inserted before the preamp.”

After I aligned the cartridge with my Dennesen Protractor, adjusted the VTA/SRA to neutral, and set the tracking force at 1.8 grams, I got down to the important stuff.

The first record was an original pressing of “Boomtown”, by David + David. Promo copy of A&M SP6-SI34. Only my subconscious knows why I chose this particular album for the maiden voyage. I like the music. It’s got some pretty nice percussion—good dynamics and speed. On the other hand, it’s edgy and unpleasant at times. The first word in my notes is “bleck”. Nothing sounded good. “Bright scorching death with lumpy bass”. I expected my Maggies to blast holes in the walls and floor and ingest the rubble, kind of like “the planet killer” in the Star Trek episode “The Doomsday Machine”. Clearly, I’d have to drive my Silverado right down my system’s throat to save the universe. Too bad Matt Decker wasn’t around to stop digital. Another anomaly was the highest level of “needle talk” I’ve ever heard. Since it was tracking pretty well and it had a new stylus tip from Expert, I figured it had to be something to do with all that plastic.

Next was “Susan’s House” by The Eels, from Beautiful Freak, DRLP-50001. Much better. This album sounds better anyway. It has great bass and a fairly neutral tonal balance. Still, the surface noise was excessive and the vocals were much more forward compared to how I last heard it at Albert Porter’s house, where it sounded rich. The Decca sounded threadbare. Worried, I sent an email to Expert Stylus about setup, and went back to listen.

The next move for me was to increase the tracking force and go negative on the VTA. Now the cartridge was perhaps 7º negative—the rear of the cartridge was closer to the record than the front of the cartridge. Now the sound was better. Less bright. Louder bass. There was some soundstage now. Also, some of that dynamic jump that the Decca is known was audible.

The record wear was more audible with this cartridge, regardless of setup. The center image was very good, with less outside-the-speaker stereo illusion. That can be compensated for with speaker positioning. Each individual little metal “thingy” on a tambourine was audible. The detail could be startling. Still, the sound wasn’t exactly correct. There seemed to be a lot of mistracking in the bass. OR, was it the records I picked out? Was I overloading the preamp? I noticed that the apparent output seemed higher than the 5mV specified by Decca. Was I overdriving the phono stage?

My next serious listening was Pretzel Logic by Steely Dan, ABCD-808. On, “Rikki Don’t Loose That Number”, the sound of the mallet striking the marimba was much cleaner and the tone of each note came through. This is the first time it sounded like a real marimba, not some toy recorded with a Mattel microphone covered by a wet blanket. There was more instrumental texture, meaning, the instruments seemed less disembodied and more there. Perhaps the Decca was capable of magic. On “Night By Night”, I could hear individual voices in the backup singers for the first time. Before, with my other cartridges and especially with the CD, the background voices were blurred together. On my favorite track, “Any Major Dude”, perhaps my favorite Dan tune, the Decca did its greatest magic trick, making the guitar sound real. This was the best guitar has ever sounded in my system. It wasn’t bright or super detailed, but correct, with just the right amount of guitar body and string, tone and transient attack. Very nice.

Something else that was better than ever was the sound of cymbals. You could easily tell the difference between different cymbals in the drum kits (several different drummers were used on this album). By contrast, CDs make cymbals sound like compressed air, and many moving coils have a whitish shimmer that I don’t hear in real life. Many moving magnets can make cymbals sound darker than the real thing.

Time for another disaster. I played a few cuts off the two record set, Louder Than Bombs by The Smiths. I heard more mistracking. Most cuts that were “hot” sounded positively awful. These aren’t the best recorded songs and the mastering and vinyl, on this American pressing, pretty much sucks, but it never sounded THAT bad.

Another ear blasting came courtesy of Led Zeppelin. I heard every overload of the recording equipment, every ugly noise the group could produce, all thrown in my face. These weren’t the best recorded albums. It might be best to play these back with a warm-sounding cartridge, MC or MM.

After hearing some bizarre distortion, I checked things over and found that one of the cartridge pins wasn’t very tight. After re-tensioning the cartridge clips, I noticed some of the distortion or mistracking was gone. But still, bright and edgy at times. Loud bass would sometimes get very wooly and flabby.

It was time for classical music. I’m a big fan of Decca classical recordings, especially those recorded by Kenneth Wilkinson, AKA “Wilkie”. That man could get a better orchestral balance than anyone. Remember the “food pyramid” and how everything needs balance in your diet? The Decca classical recordings are correctly balanced, starting from the bass of the orchestra to the very top. Nothing is too much or too little.

On Chesky CR42, Stravinsky’s Petrouchka, Oscar Danon and the Royal Phil., there were aspects to the performance that I’d never noticed. This cartridge presents music differently than just about anything else. The timpani were cleaner and more percussive than I’d ever heard. The bass, and string basses in particular, had no overhang. The bass starts very fast with this cartridge, then it trails off and decays to absolute blackness. It’s as if the dynamic range of the disk was increased, and the bass better defined. Still, there was the occasional mistracking and the brightness.

One record that was absolutely magical was Joni Mitchell’s Blue. I’ve had several pressings and they all seemed a little dead. Blue is full of great guitar playing, and the Decca presented every string as separate and distinct. The sound with other cartridges was a little muddy in comparison. Further, I could hear into the recording and get much more of Joni’s vocal inflections. At points, I could hear the compression kick in. Joni can sing very loud at the top of her range, and you really can’t catch that kind of dynamic range on a record or CD without sending the listener to the volume control. I’ve never heard that before—the gradual ramping up of the compression (or was it the limiters?). The record now sounded more like a good tape.

Just based on what the Decca could do for Blue and some other “soft” records, it’s worth owning. The Decca also makes late night listening much easier. The extra detail made listening at low levels less of a chore on my imagination.

One thing I noticed after increasing the tracking force and going more negative on the VTA was a channel imbalance. I could go on about the further mis-adjustments of this cartridge, but thankfully, Wyndham emailed me back and gave me some setup tips. The tracking force should be 1.8 grams and no higher than 2 grams. The VTA should be on the positive side or neutral. 15º is textbook for many records, and the stylus tip looks as if it is digging into the groove or pointing to the back of the tonearm. The point was, I had done what I’ve done in the past to get rid of brightness and poor tracking, and all I had done is make matters worse. But Wyndham’s best advice was to load the cartridge at 25K-ohm. This is not applicable to every variation of the Decca cartridge, as the inductance of the windings varied from version to version, so this may not work in all cases.

Wyndham told me that the cartridge had a rising high end that Decca tried to fix with a capacitor built into the cartridge. This isn’t an inherent flaw of the cartridge. All cartridges need a specific loading to get flat frequency response. Depending on your phono preamp and cables, you might have a flat playback. On the other hand, if you have low capacitance cables, and no capacitive loading in the preamp, you can get bright sound, something I’d been trying to fix by tracking weight and VTA. Up to now, I’d made the bass performance worse and only slightly affected the brightness. This meant that I’d need to find a way to adjust the loading and I’d need to re-set-up the cartridge.

Since I was experimenting, and since I didn’t want to open up the preamp, I soldered up some adaptors. Those aren’t audiophile parts, just some metal film resistors from Rat Shack and some scavenged jacks. I experimented with several settings and settled on 17K-ohm, though I didn’t try more than four different loads. This doesn’t mean that 17K-ohm is best for you. If your preamp has capacitance loading, or if your cables are longer or have higher capacitance per foot, then the loading adjustment may not be needed. One thing that makes it more critical in my system is using ribbon tweeters (Maggie 2.6r). Ribbons will exacerbate any brightness and expose more distortion than other driver technologies.

Up to this point, I had taken for granted that when the cartridge body was parallel with the surface of the record, the VTA would be close to 0º. Was I ever wrong! I got down on my knees with a flashlight and a lamp and squinted with all my squintiness to see what the stylus was really doing under all that plastic. To my amazement, with the cartridge body level, and the VTF set at 2 grams, the SRA (stylus rake angle) was very negative (the stylus tip was pointing towards the front of the cartridge—the same result as having the back of the cartridge too close to the record). I’d guesstimate that the result was something like -20º. That’s very significant since most records were cut at positive 15º, and 20º since the mid ‘70s by some mastering engineers. It would explain much of the mistracking and funny bass response. To get the geometry right, I lowered tracking force to 1.8 grams and raised the back of the cartridge to something like +20º, giving something around 10-15º of positive SRA (depends on the thickness of the pressing).

The transformation of the sound was pretty incredible. The high frequency brightness was almost gone—almost. Also, I had better channel-to-channel balance and imaging that was wider and deeper, but that still wasn’t state-of-the-art. Balance was easy to fix. I’d like to note that the coils in this cartridge are 45 years old and copper ages, it wasn’t oxygen free copper AND knowing what I know about the quality control problems, I’m not sure that they have the same number of windings per coil. Not having heard any of the newer cartridges, I’d like to limit these observations to the older versions.

I’m not going to go over the listening notes, just some observations.

The highs were still very fast, but not ear-bleeding bright. The bass was state-of-the-art, better than CD. The transient response, top to bottom, was as good as anything I’ve heard, except 15 IPS tape. I was still thinking about doing something about the needle talk. It’s pretty common for Decca users to open the body of the cartridge and stuff it with some kind of putty or goop. I hesitated, but in the end, decided to give it a try. I knew it should help the sound. I could stroke the body of the cartridge with a stylus cleaning brush and it sounded like I was cleaning the cartridge. I’d never heard anything that bad. I tapped the body with my fingernail, and it gave a loud “clack”, instead of a muted “thunk”.

I opened the thing up (which was only barely glued together) and packed the periphery of the cartridge with a latex/silicone mixture meant for bathroom uses. It’s a good candidate because it comes off clean and in one piece. There was one area that was a prime candidate for treatment that I refused to treat—an area in the very center of the cartridge, immediately behind the coils and in front of the cartridge pins. All the cartridge wiring was in that area, and not wanting to goop them together or expose them to the moisture in the water based latex, I let them be. I let the stuff cure overnight before gluing the two halves back together.

The results of packing the cartridge was profound and helped solve two problems. First of all, it helped eliminate most of the residual high frequency glare. Second, it improved cross-talk and imaging. During listening sessions, I noted some of the worst cross-talk I’d ever heard. I didn’t always hear it. It didn’t seem to crop up in the low and mid frequencies. I assumed it was an artifact of the lateral plus vertical generators. What it really was would be the needle talk exciting the cartridge body, which acted like Victrola’s sound box—really!! All that resonance fed back into the generator and produced echoes. If you have one of these older Deccas, it’s worth a shot, but try at your own risk. I’m not going to buy you a new cartridge. Neither will Constantine. (Whew. –Ed.) You’ve been warned.

Consider this an unfinished review. I’d like to experiment with a box that’d allow adjustable loading, resistive and capacitive, and do the ground splitting chores at the same time. Oh, and with good quality wire, connectors, resistors and caps. Also, I’d like to put this on my SME V, which has very effective damping, a magnesium arm tube, and world class bearings. While experimenting, I was content to use the MMT, which has damping, but not very effective damping. I also have a London International arm that was designed around these cartridges and is a damped unipivot.

So, is this cartridge for you? If you’re looking for your first cartridge, NO WAY should you consider a Decca. Buy a Grado first, or Sumiko, or something that you can practice with. These cartridges are difficult to setup and adjust, and as I’ve stated, the loading in your preamp may give horrible sound. If you have a chance to hear one, make it a point to bring some records you’re familiar with. It can take adjustments to equipment and perhaps even a different tonearm, but the results can be better than everything else in some respects, and very good in most other areas. So I’d recommend it with many reservations and caveats. I’d like to compare it to one of the new production units. Perhaps that’ll happen soon. If I make breakthroughs with other tonearms, I’ll let you know in a follow-up.

This has been a review of the cartridge and the service, and the service from Expert Stylus can’t be faulted. The entire process was pleasant and the work was excellent. I recommend Expert Stylus with no reservations. Very fairly priced and good work. I plan on having Wyndham rebuild an EMT and/or a Supex 900 this year and I’ll do a follow up on Expert Stylus then. Most readers would be sending a moving-coil after all, so the Decca C4E and Clearaudio MM aren’t the bulk of Wyndham’s business in cartridge rebuilding. However, do you have a moving-magnet with a worn out stylus and no available replacement? Send it to Expert Stylus.

For a record collector, I don’t see how you can make it on just one cartridge. Like speakers, they’re all different. Different generators sound different. Different stylus tips track differently and some can read the groove above or below previous record wear. You can play back a ratty old jazz record on an audiophile system and make it sound awful. You could also have another cartridge that forgives some of the shortcomings and make the record enjoyable. If you really want to do it right, you’ll need at least two tables or a table with two arms (preferably three—evil laugh). Go buy records! Buy anything that looks interesting, the cheaper the better. Buy a record cleaner. Forget about audiophile standards. (I’m sure Phillip is just joking. –Ed.)

Forget about mint. Just buy music and start listening. Try some cheap cartridges. Find a broken moving-coil, like the Supex, and have it rebuilt. I’m not saying that we’re aiming for low fidelity here. I’m proposing that there are literally tens of millions of used records out there that can be enjoyable with the right combination of cartridge, arm and preamp. There’s plenty of room for state-of-the-art cartridges with well recorded, well mastered and well pressed vinyl. The sad fact is that most records have faults. That’s where I stand, and I won’t back down.

Happy listening!

I couldn’t have completed this review without the help of a few informative web sites. First, many useful bits of cartridge information are available at “The Cartridge Database”.

http://www.cartridgedb.com

Some nice background information on mono cartridges and playback can be found at the Audiotools website:

http://audiotools.com/78.html

http://www.soundfountain.com/amb/ortodeccatan.html

Rudolf does a nice job of explaining some of the older technology. I’ll do a review of the periphery ring sold by Rudolf, in the future. He’s a first class audio hobbyist and gentleman.

Denon DL103

Comments: editor@dagogo.com