Styli: Elliptical, Conical, Microline, Shibata? What's the difference?

I changed the Goldring cart that came with the turntable a few days after I bought it for a Denon DL-160.

 

Right, the Pearl is another variation of the Excel ES-70. Most variants of that cart will sound a little neutral to warm. If you want something brighter, AT or Ortofon will probably have something for you. However, you may want to try spacers with the Pearl first. It may not be a night and day difference but might be enough to make the cart more to your liking. AT will sound too bright if you have too much capacitance in your system, whether or not you use spacers.

 

What Goldring cart was it? Just curious...

 

One thing I can't tell are the specs of my Phono preamp as it's a tube EAR 834 CLONE, a Chinese copy that is supposed to be an exact circuit board copy of the original that sounded great with either the Denon DL-110 and DL-160. I don't want another DL-110 as it lasted only 6 months, 6 months after being installed and adjusted with two different protactors and tracking force was adjusted with a digital gauge.
I don't think a bright cart would be an issue as I use a tube Phono preamp mostly with Matsushita 12AX7A tubes that are very warm and soft (I'm not currently using them with the Sumiko Pearl) and the rest of my equipment sounds on the soft side. My Pioneer SC LX-76 (also sold in the US with the Elite badge) sounds warm with the Pure Direct mode on which disables all digital processing, and my B&W 601 from 1996 are not bright either. In addition to that I want a cart that I can change the stylus.

 

You could try an AT. If it winds up sounding too bright for you (due to capacitance issues), don't say I didn't warn you.

 

I don't remember, that was 12 years ago.

 

Thank you for your advice and I'll keep it in mind when I go for a new cart. I first thought about a Grado but a forum member told me about hum issues with Rega turntables.

 

The Shibata-style stylus on my turntable is essential for playing quadraphonic (CD4) albums, but with an effective tip mass of just 0.22g also provides excellent sound quality on stereo and mono discs. I say "Shibata-style" as Bang & Olufsen didn't want to pay a royalty for using the Shibata shape so they got an in-house engineer, Subir Pramanik, to devise something very similar but not quite essential, and marketed it as a Pramanik stylus. I understand that, more than 40 years later, Mr Pramanik still works there on a part-time basis.

 

The Audio Technica VM540ML features a Shibata stylus doesn't it?

 

I had the same deck, it was a Goldring Elektra preinstalled.

 

You're right, now that you've said it the name came to my mind!!! Were you happy with your Goldring TT?

 

Your tracking force isn’t force, it’s mass. Divide by contact area to get force. I have a spreadsheet somewhere. In PSI terms, the tracking force comes out to several 10’s of thousands psi. As I recall.

 

So, what is my gauge reading at 1.5 grams?
If I weigh 150 lbs, (earth scale weight) what is my psi?

 

I liked it, yeah.

 

It's better to say the scale is measuring a force, as it's actually not a mass. It's called gramforce.

 

What is the area of your feet?

 

If @Kiko1974 didn't like the Elektra, no wonder Kiko didn't like the Pearl. Both are designs based on the Excel ES-70.

 

No, it's a microline, finer tip than a shibata. AT does have some shibata carts though. The VM750SH would be an example.

AT styli

2.7 x 0.26 mil Shibata

2.2 x 0.12 mil MicroLine®

 

Most modern stylii have a "radius" of 6 or 7 (measurement units), but some have 10 - much wider and very narrow (front to back). Radius may be a misleading term, as many may overlook the fact that all non-spherical stylii have two radii - the width and front-to-back. Your reference is to the 'width' radius.

A stylus does not rest on the bottom of the groove, but rest on both sides of the groove wall, so hence at the same tracking weight it's the same weight, but not same pressure - compare a person wearing a stiletto heel and then a flat heal. The stiletto has a smaller concentrated contact and exerts more pressure than the flat heel which has larger contact area. Same concept with advanced stylus shapes - the contact area is larger and therefore the pressure is lower. That why snow shoes have such a large footprint - to spread the weight over a larger area so less pressure at any particular point of contact.

 

Sorry, I have no gauge to accurately measure, but I'd say 'bout a foot...or two.

 

So, one can not state a one and done pressure weight as it is constantly changing as the grove width narrows/widens?

 

I suspect that's actually correct.

Consider two groove scenarios - the blank silent groove - the stylus rests evenly on the two walls and the pressure is even distributed (assuming correct anti-skating).

Now consider the highly excited music example - lots of interaction with different instruments playing loudly - and hence lots of wiggling groove sections. The stylus is pushed left/right , right/left, up/down. Just like any object there surely will be some more pressure on one part of the groove when it is required to 'rebound' to the other direction.

You may have experienced an older mono record with more wear on one groove than the other (I find it's usually the left that's more worn) - and that's surely mostly due to uneven pressure on the sides of the groove walls.

 

Advanced stylus shapes tend to mitigate the noise issue and excessive cleaning is not the answer. The only cleaning I do to my records is a single pass of one revolution with a carbon fiber brush and I experience nearly CD quiet on all my records tracking them with a nude complex fine line.

 

Thank you for your reply. Do AT's Microline stylus perform better than say the elliptical stylus on Denon's DL-110 stylus? I had a bad experience with my last DL-110 which had an early death, it developed distorsion on the left channel. Denon UK recognized was in fact defective and offered me a replacement one or a refund. I took a refund and got the cheaper Sumiko Pearl, but I find it too neutral or dull and lifeless for my taste. Those cymbals on Van Halen S/T have no presence with the Pearl. It's not a cart for Rock music.

 

So all we can do is concern ourselves with VTF at rest. Anything else is just mathematical exercise as it pertains to this hobby.