GE VR 1000 Owners Club

I thought I would start a separate thread to break away from the 'Fifty year old cartridges' thread. The VR 1000 was introduced in 1961. It is approaching 60 years old. This thread is for the owners of the GE VR 1000 and those who simply are interested. I know that there are more owners of this cartridge out there besides stereoguy, tripower 389, and me. Hopefully others will join in. Please remember, no buying or selling here.

 

I think it would be helpful to link to a test report from October 1961 to benchmark the capabilities of this rare and sought after cartridge:

https://books.google.com/books?id=R31UAAAAMAAJ&pg=RA6-PA56&lpg=RA6-PA56&dq=ge+vr+1000&source=bl&ots=lUPPVPjfFq&sig=z7lkyWJImoC_fN16K9BkCP-yhZI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi5z9CvyvHWAhUhiVQKHbdBA2E4ChDoAQhFMAU#v=onepage&q=ge%20vr%201000&f=false

 

There are two GE VR 1000's on eBay at the moment for sale. One is an auction, the other buy it now for $175. Neither are mine. I have two VR 1000's and I do not ever intend to sell them.

 

The one for $175 sold already. It was only available for a few hours. They sell that quickly.

 

The tan one in the original box just sold for....$262!!! Yikes!~!!

Of course, I have a hunch we will see that same cart in the same box back on Ebay for like $500. I was going to buy the one for $175 actually, and someone did a buy it now.

The VR 1000 is not for everybody, but if you play stuff from the 50s, 60s and 70s, its pretty awesome. It REALLY pulls detail out of the grooves and provides a sense of energy and urgency to the music. I was playing some Bill Haley the other night and the sound was so "immediate" and up close.

Its probably about as close to the London Decca as you'll get without spending $300 or more.

 

I wish I had a London cartridge to compare to. Maybe someday. It is nice that the styli are replaceable on the VR 1000. What is currently available for replacement styli is pretty sad. On the other hand, if I had a London, I probably would not wear out the stylus as I play my better stereo so rarely. I am trying to source better tips for the VR 1000 styli. All that is available now are 0.7 mil conicals. Nothing wrong with that tip size, but the tips are more shank than diamond. And the styli assemblies require a rebuild as they were so poorly made to begin with.

 

I will never buy another cart where the stylus is not replaceable. Thats nothing but a money grab to make you buy a whole new cart when the stylus is worn. I think of all the $$$ I spend on new Denon carts over the years, the DL-160, the DL-110, DL 103.

PhxJohn is "the man" when it comes to the 508 stylus for the VR 1000. if he cant make a better stylus for it, no one can.

 

I am still curious to hear a DL-110. You have had quite an impressive list of cartridges and you probably have or had even more than that. I can understand your sentiments towards cartridges with non-replaceable styli. You play a lot of records.

 

$175 is too rich for my blood, but I'd love to have one of those early GEs. The oldest design in my magnetic stereo cart stable is the slightly older Shure M3D, also a classic.

 

One VR 1000 sold for $100 recently.

 

What is the best sonic feature of this model? I've read some folks who swear by some of the older Empire cartridges, but I've never heard one in the flesh.

 

There are a few...channel separation, dynamics, transients, and sounds greatly more 'real'.

 

I just got back from an industrial rubber supply company. The $100 estimate to create 200 rubber pieces to rebuild the styli for the VR 1000 is now $600-800 dollars. But, they could go lower. It will have to be much lower for me to pay to get those parts made.

 

Yea, i missed that one!!!

 

Agreed.

 

I may have found a Consumer Reports tests on the VR 1000-5 and VR 1000-7. A member on AK mentioned the test and review in a 1964 issue. I believe I found the issue on Amazon and ordered it. The AK member also stated that the VR 1000's came in at the bottom of the ratings. I believe that. By then, the styli that were manufactured for the VR 1000 were so far off from the original patent that Peter E Pritchard must have been laughing his butt off.

 

A bad February 1964 Consumer Reports review would have an impact on sales in a negative way. The GE VR 1000 did not appear in the Allied Radio Catalog until the 1965 edition which would have been published in the fall of 1964 if I remember correctly. The VR 1000 only appeared in the catalog for three years.

 

Waiting for two 508 styli to arrive from Amsterdam. One is sapphire tipped with butyl rubber dampers and the rear of the armature is not engulfed in Vulcolock so it probably will work fine. The other is diamond tipped with two gum rubber dampers and probably will not work at all. We shall see if I am good enough to have predicted this correctly.

 

The original stylus as installed on new cartridge was manufactured by GE?

 

They outsourced them. Big mistake. Bigger mistake was lack of oversight.

 

The styli were made by companies that made styli for ceramic cartridges: Astatic, Pfanstiehl, Walco, and some Swiss company. Many were sold under other brand names such as Electro-Voice, Miller, TAE, Duotone, etc. When I put the pieces of the puzzle together, it seems someone specified the incorrect size for the rubber pieces at some point as some of the styli were properly made. Peter Pritchard was producing state of the art cartridges at his own company ADC before he left GE. It seems the aftermarket styli manufacturers were having problems assembling the styli. The stylus tip was not the correct vertical distance from the pole pieces. Roy Dally at GE changed Peter Pritchard stylus design to add adhesive behind the rear damper obviously not knowing how the stylus assembly worked. His idea was to prop the stylus in the correct position, add the adhesive, let it dry, and remove the prop. The adhesive was not enough to hold the stylus in the correct position, and reduced the compliance to degrees varying from moderate to excessive. Another attempt to get the stylus in the proper position was to pull the front damper part way out of the plastic body and put glue on the sides of the dampers. Adding adhesive behind the rear dampers became SOP even when not needed. Some manufacturers used the correct adhesive: Dow Corning Silastic #731 or GE RTV 103. Those two products reduced compliance but the styli were still usable if no other defects were present. The Swiss manufacturer used Vulcolock instead. That rendered the stylus unusable unless there was a bubble or void in the adhesive which then allowed the cantilever the move as freely as it should. To this day, it amazes me that such a simple and brilliant design was ruined by manufacturing and 'engineering' incompetence. I have hand assembled some of these styli and they can track any record at 1.0 grams.

 

I should correct a statement that I made.....there is no problem with outsourcing from a quality standpoint as long as there is oversight. I am almost anxious to read the Consumer Reports test of the VR 1000-5 and VR 1000-7. The 0.5 mil Astatic N359-5D really sounds wonderful. There is a bit of sibilance on some records. I would imagine that is caused by the adhesive behind the rear damper. By lowering the compliance and adding mass, it lowers the resonant frequency. The armature(cantilever) itself weighs less than a milligram which is surprising as it is made of steel. If the VR 1000 had not been doomed by Roy Dally's change and GE's lack of quality control for the styli, the styli design could have been refined to have even lower mass. Even changes to the dampers(rubber pieces) such as different materials or thicknesses could have been realized. Any of this is still possible, but the problem is that there are too few VR 1000's in use to support the expenditure necessary. I have only found one problem with Peter Pritchard's design of the VR 1000 stylus assembly. That was specifying gum rubber for the rear damper. The shelf life of gum rubber is very short and it becomes hard and brittle. Butyl rubber which was specified for the front damper works very well for the rear damper. Using butyl rubber for both dampers results in increased compliance and a flatter frequency response.

 

John knows what he is talking about. GE, with all their appliance factories, banks of mechanical engineers, draftsmen, etc, wouldnt manufacture a simple stylus. They outsourced it, as John says, and only a couple of companies ever built the thing right. Amazing!

 

Mike, the Walco's sold by EVG were very good as you know. Unfortunately those are gone. The GOOD ones are gone. Hint, hint. If it were not for the adhesive that Dally specified to be added and Dally's revised body, I have no doubt that they would track at 1.0 grams. The Pfanstiehl were the worst with the lack of clearance and glue all over the rubber bits. This is no reflection on Pfanstiehl of today. For those of you who are not familiar, these styli are 50+ years old in most cases. The Swiss made styli are usually good. The problems with those is that the adhesive behind the rear damper is Vulcolock instead of the specified adhesive. No adhesive is best. And the rear damper is typically gum rubber. Peter's only mistake. Maybe. He may not have been thinking about the styli being so rare that we would have to buy them decades after they were produced. LOL. I cannot rate the rare Astatics. I have only had one. With the 0.5 mil tip, it sounds very clean. Tracking I have to rate as fair and that is due to the adhesive. If I use 'trackability' as the most important factor, the Walco's win.

 

I picked up 2 walco’s with soft blue rubber suspensions.
They were crap - looking at them and checking them out physically, one would think they would work. I could hardly get any volume out of them.

The best so far are the ones I got from John and one I rebuilt by pulling a cantilever/stylus out of a hardened EVG and reinserted it into my broken original black rubbery suspension.

I just don’t know how good the diamonds are on these - as compared to Pickering 380 Shure M and Empire 880 from that era.