HOLY GRAIL ALIVE! Check out the vintage cartridge & stylus collection I just took in on consignment*

In all my years dealing vintage hifi, this is the most incredible vintage cartridge and stylus collection I have ever seen!

 

Very cool!

 

There's a NOS '60s brown Shure M55E in there, man! Super cool!

 

I'm excited because there are some real obscurities in this pile that I will be able to try for the first time. This could be a game changer. Finally now have a stylus for my ADC 1 body!

 

Holy cow!

 

I spy a Stanton EEE with brush.

 

Very cool!!

 

I'm jealous, especially of those old mono pickup heads.

Something I always wonder in these situations though is how you can know which cartridges are still in good enough shape to play records without damaging them.

 

So how much did you pay?

 

You normally don't pay when you take something in on consignment.

 

I spy nice goodies for that Bogen/Lenco L 70 of mine I am getting ready to buy the new idler for. A nice haul!

 

I predict there will be some interesting offerings in the classifieds soon...

 

Cool grab. I like the video. Who sings this version of Wild Is The Wind?

 

Sweet! Love the song

 

That's a good question. Well, the first thing you can do is visually inspect them. Look to see if there are stylus tips present and if the cantilevers look straight and clean or if they're crooked and corroded and gnarly. Then you can inspect the stylus under high magnification to be sure. From there you can proceed to setup and do a listening test with a record you don't care about. And finally, evaluate performance using a test lp or a series of various test lps. Depending on the results, you will know whether or not the cartridge is safe. Many of the cartridges in this collection are mono pickups with giant tip sizes intended for 78 rpm playback. In that case, you can skip the step involving the test records as the results would be irrelevant. It's also a good idea to make sure you know the size of the stylus before playing any vinyl you care about. The cartridge may look like a normal stereo cartridge, but could have some giant 3 mil 78 rpm stylus installed that wouldn't be too kind to your modern pressings. In truth, most vintage cartridges from the early 1960s and prior track rather poorly. I would only use them for early mono pressings, 45s, or 78s, if anything. Some exceptions of the top of my head are the Shure M44/M55 series with light tracking styli, Shure V15 I, Pickering V15 with light tracking stylus, some early Audio Technica OEM cartridges track halfway decent, and possibly some by Empire as well, depending on the stylus. I can't remember right now, but yeah, most of them can sound okay but fail miserably on the test lps. It will be fun to listen to and check out the cartridges from this collection that I'm interested in playing with. There are about 7 or 8 of them that I'm really stoked on.

 

Isn't that lovely? I adore this version. You have good taste, sir! It's from this record:

Embers and Ashes - Wikipedia »

 

Probably not. In my experience, this kind of stuff doesn't sell very well on this forum. However, if you see anything you like in the video and it's still available, let me know and we can just run the sale through the forum classifieds so it's legit and we follow the site rules.

 

With stock tonearm? Heck yes.

 

I would be curious to hear back from you after you have had the opportunity to play with the various combinations of vintage cartridges. I would think that very few people have these cartridges available to compare them side by side today.

I like listening to music from the 50's, 60's and 70's on vinyl. So far, I feel that a vintage cartridge, paired with a vintage TT, is the best way to achieve the whole vintage sound experience (with the right vintage speakers and amps, of course).

 

I didn't realize it was on consignment.

 

The "vintage sound experience" really means 'listening on a system that is warm, rich, full, and natural' vs the modern trend, which is thin, bright, "detailed", and shrill. The 'vintage sound' can be accomplished using modern gear if the components are selected carefully. What is difficult, however, is to find a modern cartridge that sounds good. 99% of them are bright, with up-tilted high frequencies. You can call Needle Doctor or a similar dealer and ask them, point blank, what is the cartridge you have that isn't bright, that is warm and full sounding...the classic vinyl sound, and they don't have an answer. They'll usually say Grado. That's ridiculous. Grados have well-documented accentuated highs. They're tizzy sounding. A child can find the frequency response plots on the internet and verify this. The only modern cartridge that really qualifies is the M97xE, but it has other problems. The Sumiko Pearl approaches 'vintage sound', but it's not refined enough to be taken seriously and it's also a little on the bright side. The more money you spend on a cartridge, generally the brighter they become. Ortofon SPU could probably qualify based on the fact that it is, indeed, essentially a reissue vintage cartridge, but they don't track very well. Denon DL-103 is a reissue vintage cartridge, but it has very aggressive upper mids and is rather bright...not a mellow sound. Shure SC35C almost qualifies, but it's not a true reissue and doesn't sound quite like the original, and with the stock heavy tracking stylus it fails brutally on the test lps. Another option is to purchase a modern cartridge that tracks well and then tame it and tailor it by experimenting with loading/equalization. There's also tone controls, but that's the easy way out.

 

I hear you, man, but typically I don't brag about my favorite obscure cartridges on the internet. All this does is drive up the prices. I save that type of knowledge for my customers...those who want delicious, natural sound and are willing to pay for it. I've spent hours, weeks, years of my life conducting research in a similar fashion to most folks going to a university. I'm always willing to help out, but at this point, I want to get paid for the good stuff! You won't even find the answers in my gear profile, but there are certainly clues. For example, buying the cartridge I have listed would be a complete and utter waste of time UNLESS you know which secret stylus to use and how to configure everything. In the absence of this information, it would be a definite WTF moment.

 

I prefer my old Shure M31 E cartridge over my more modern cartridges.

 

Unacceptable. Not telling us about them would officially make you a tease. I agree you shouldn't tell "the internet", just those of us in this thread.

 

I'd love to see the list after you catalog them.

I never find good stuff like this.