Which cart ignored pops/crackle on LPs the most you've experienced?

My Shure M3D glides past a lot of the grrove damage on my worst records. The rolled off high-end (-6 or more dB at 20 kHz) helps as well.

If you're playing a mono pressing, a mono cartridge makes a night and day difference.

 

Does make one wonder what else it's not picking up. Good point.

 

Tru dat.

 

Getting a dedicated mono cart (Audio Technica AT33mono) for mono records was a revelation for playing mono records. About 80% of the surface noise, clicks, and pops I heard on mono records through my stereo cart are nonexistent with the mono cart.

 

IMO you want the cartridge to pick up as much information as possible from the grooves. I use a AT440MLB, I don't buy crappy noisy records though, I make sure all used vinyl I buy is NM. If you're going to buy cheap used vinyl with ticks and clicks you really don't want to be spending money on a MP 110, instead just get a cheap cartridge so you don't damage the MP 110 by playing scratched vinyl.

 

I completely agree.

Thinking about the OP's question, the cartridge I have that is best at ignoring pops and clicks is a ceramic cartridge I have on a Califone portable (school-house style) record player. I can play my old beat-up Capitol Beatles LPs on it and get an amazingly clean playback (considering the amount of scratches and scuffs on the records). If I play the same LPs on my Technics SL-1200 with a Shure M97xE, the results are basically Rice Crispies. Of course, the ceramic cartridge and the Califone are chopping off much of the frequencies, so the bothersome bits are eliminated.

 

I try to get all nm records, but there are some greedy ducks who ramp up the cost for this. It's hard to find descent LPs'
Quite a few of mine have Rice Krispies, I clean twice, vacuum twice, very slowly. Wipe down with damp cotton towels to remove any built up static from vacuuming. On platter, then run 15x with HE+ record brush. Start recording, if still noisy, I'll wash again, and vacuum slower, keep trying til it's good, then I'll try different weight from my carts.

 

For me the Ortofon 2M Blue was the worst.

 

Noticed this also compared to my AT 150sa, but it could be the difference in output mV between the two...

 

I remember both the Sumiko Pearl and the Shure M97xe (stabilizer brush engaged) performing well in this regard.

 

IMHO there are two paths I see most clearly to get you where you want to be:

1.) Go with a cart that focuses on midrange and isn't particularly extended. (the down side to this is you will not hear extended detail that is inherently part of the performance and recorded acoustic, nor many soundstage ques and you may happily live in a bliss of ignorance). AND still not get perfect surface silence.

2.) Go out and get a Line Contact stylus that sits lower (and longer) in the grove then previous conicals (on old records), and not have pure vinyl surface silence, yet be much closer to the ideal, AND enjoy everything that you would otherwise never even pick up from one of those big mid choices.

The BIGGEST single aspect in performance though is proper SET-UP regardless(.)

(your mileage may very)

I wish you musical bliss, whichever your proclivity.

 

In path number one, you're making the pretty bold assumption that all records have extended highs and lows. Many records don't. For those records, path one may well be the more sensible option.

I have cartridges that allow me to pursue both paths, depending on the pressing in question. You can have your cake and eat it too.

 

Lyra and it sounds amazing

 

Shure v15vmr for me, factory stylus. It's probably my gear chain but v15iii with sas is my current worst performer for surface noise.

 

Not really (bold) at all.

What is our excepted definition of extended?

I'm not referring to a transducer that extends beyond our audible range.

I would only say that many Denon 103 (types) leave a lot on the vinyl. To these ears, that is not a solution, only a poorly applied band-aid. Cozy perhaps, but lacking acoustic definition. No offense meant to those who love that flavor, like milk in their Scotch. But I care to experience the subtle perfume as well.

 

Has anyone used an OM 5E? I normally use an OM 40, but I have an almost unused 5E sitting around.

 

Did the cutting head reprodcuce frequencies above x kHz when the lacquer was cut? Maybe, maybe not. In the late 50s, some labels were barely getting to 14-15 kHz. Anything above that on such a record is probably noise.
What about labels that purposely trimmed the high frequencies? Motown and Stax would commonly kill everything above 10 kHz. Do we really need to be reproducing the noise at 20 kHz on a Tamla LP? I would say no.

 

If you are good with set-up, the AT95VL fits nicely in category one and two.

 

That's a very interesting, value conscious choice. I have not heard one play though.

 

Not bad. The cart does lack the separation of a better cart, but the frequency range is nice, and this mysterious vivid line stylus is less the pig with non-fill than some other shapes I've used. If you are handy, you can pick up remaining stock Clearaudio Aurum Beta or Virtuoso and get the same body with better separation, and fit the AT95VL stylus to the cart. You have to trim the stylus down though. Too much trouble for most people.

You can see it is a little rolled off on both ends. This is with a 62K loading.

 

While I think that better stylus profiles (better Line Contacts, Microridge, FG and the better Van den Huls for example) might generally be quieter in the groove, I also think that the issue is a complicated one with a lot of other factors involved.

Anecdotally, the aluminum cantilevered cartridges I've owned have been the noisiest, followed by ruby (quite a bit quieter) and then boron, which seems to me to be exceptionally quiet in the groove. I'm just breaking in a newly retipped cartridge and it has a sapphire cantilever with a high quality microridge (it is very teeny) fitted, and although I was expecting it to be closer to the ruby it may in fact actually approach the boron version I have which supposedly has a slightly less refined stylus.

Obviously tonearm/cartridge compatibility will also have a huge effect on how quiet the cartridge is going to be; if it is fitted to a tonearm that is not particularly sympathetic in terms of effective mass and cartridge compliance, the cartridge is going to have some difficulties.

Then there is the phono stage. Too much gain has the potential to exacerbate groove noise and pops/clicks with overload and clipping while (anecdotally again) my experience has been that better phono stages can make a significant contribution to, for lack of a better word or phrase, reducing the impact of pops and clicks or the way they intrude into the music on playback.

I would not include cartridges that roll off the frequency extremes to reduce the impact of pops and clicks in what I'd consider to be an appropriate way to tackle the problem; I'd look at that as more of a band aid approach which is filtering out some significant parts of the music to achieve the result of reducing the impact of clicks and pops. I think there are much better ways of tackling the problem.

Clean records in good shape being the first one obviously but we all have to make some compromises with some less than perfect vinyl every once in a while.