Yes, that is Andy. I've had 3 cartridges done by Soundsmith and 2 by Andy (the last two) over the years. Andy's regular/normal turnaround time is much faster than Peter's and you can expect your cartridge back in 2 weeks to a month max. All of his retips include repair/replacement of the suspension, which Peter does not do normally. Andy has done 2 Ortofon MC 20 Supers for me in the past few years. The first one needed an entire rebuild including the coil replaced (so that job was a bit more money but still very reasonable-Soundsmith either would not or could not repair that cartridge which is why I sent it to Andy) and was done with a boron cantilever and microridge stylus. More recently, I had Andy do another MC 20 Super. I had asked him to do the same boron cantilever and microridge but he apparently did not have boron in stock and sent the cartridge back to me with a sapphire cantilever and microridge without telling me before he did the work that was going to happen. That's the worst thing I can say about him and in the end I'm probably more pleased with the sapphire than the boron. The sapphire seems to have a slightly better stylus with lower tip mass and is probably slightly more detailed than the boron; I was afraid that it would be a bit more aggressive and forward but in the end they have the same kind of presentation with the sapphire indeed being a bit more detailed. So it's hard to be mad at the guy when he delivers a product that you are extremely satisfied with. His current price on the boron (if he has it) and sapphire is $450 U.S. He does very good work IMO and in my experience. He converted/retipped a Koetsu Rosewood to mono for a friend of mine, who was also very satisfied with his work-I've heard that cartridge too and it turned out very nicely as well.
Thank you for the detailed review. I will contact him to make sure what's going int to cantilever I don't want to pay for boron and get sapphire.
Quoting myself for a follow up picture. A Neil Young record I just spun was the last spin for my trusty old AT440MLa. Something funny with that needle - it's old so I don't want to chance it any more. It picks up gunk and can't play a side of music without picking up gunk and distorting. When I clean it off it sounds like new - super clean - but play a record and it picks up gunk and sounds bad a side later. This time it started really sounding bad on the first song on side 2. Unfortunately I currently don't have the budget to replace that stylus with a compatible microline so I pressed my old Stanton L 737-E- into service with the new elliptical I got from from LPGear a few weeks ago for the Pickering TL-2. The LPGear stylus was only $32 and is a curious piece - it's meant for a p-mount cart but it sounds like deep fried a-- at P-mount spec of 1.25 tracking force - but sounds quite nice at 2.25! The L737-E- and TL-2 are P-mount versions of the classic industry standard Stanton 680 so as such they are nice cartridges. I purchased the L737-E- new in 1984. This elliptical from LPGear is performing quite nicely under the heavier tracking force.
My Denon 301MKII - the Denon table is gone but the cart remains. Please click on pic for larger image if you wish
....freshly mounted Benz Micro Gold on the original AR head shell for the XB in the background ....love the cart! ....for bigger image just click on pic
I swapped out my P-mount carts this week. The Pickering TL-2 is back on the Realistic turntable. Inquiring minds will notice that the cartridge body matches the stylus housing now. The silver headshell really sticks out like a sore thumb but I'm not going to replace it...
More than likely my next Cartridge, I have an Original VPI Zephyr that I've had rebuilt once. I think I'll trade it toward the Star, have heard nothing but Positive comments on it.
Get it. You won't regret it. It's fantastic. Just be sure you have a phono stage that will give you enough gain. I've found it needs about 65 dB to sound good.
My Shure V15III. Don't try tracking these kind of records at home with your cartridge, it would jump out and be permanently damaged.
Audio Technica SS445E/U universal mount that I picked up as NOS a couple weeks ago. Astonishing performance from this. I can easily swap between this and the Stanton or other carts.
Audio Technica AT-Mono3/LP on a Sumiko FT3 with an additional 3 gram Technics headshell weight. A synergistic combination based on the number 3 All kidding aside, this cheap and cheesy cartridge is the biggest bang for buck cartridge I have owned with a ton of AT trickle down technology in it at a bargain price. You do have to have mono records to play on it though and it requires careful matching to phono stage to get the best out of it with its weird 1.2 mV output. And it's not very pretty. But it sounds great.
I've often wondered about that cartridge. I recently got a phono stage with a mono switch, but I might still try it at some point.
It is crazy good and I expect that it would be a fairly significant improvement on the mono switch. In my set-up it easily and significantly bested a rebuilt Ortofon MC 20 Super with a boron cantilever and microridge stylus that I strapped for mono (more or less the equivalent of the mono switch) on both vintage and reissued mono. I just took a look at your Studio Phono. 60 dB is going to be way too much gain-I think I have just a bit too much somewhere in the low to mid 50's but it still sounds very good. I have a current mode phono stage which is a bit unusual. But most cartridges in my experience have real world output which is slightly higher than spec'd. You might be just very slightly light of gain at the 46 dB setting but I don't think it would be by much, and you have an ability to load with that stage around 500 ohms which should be right in the sweet spot for the cartridge. If you have 50-60 or more monos in decent condition that you like I would say go for it. The cartridge also surprised me in terms of how forgiving it was (even compared to the strapped Ortofon, which improved over its stereo counterpart in that area) in terms of records that were less than perfect. I had a number here that moved from VG to VG+ into NM territory with the true mono cartridge. I was very surprised by this cartridge, especially with its $120 street price.
I'm a fan of this one as well, having been turned on to it by this forum. I strapped it to my KAB SL-1200mk2 last night, in fact, for an evening of Beatles. Throws up a big, fat, solid center image and is quite dynamic. Has a nice way with surface noise as well. I don't have much experience with phono stages, and my only outboard one was a modded Cambridge 640p, but it sounds like it's liking the onboard MM stage on my Outlaw RR2160 (33.5dB in MM mode and very low noise/distortion according to Stereophile). Master volume needs to be pretty high given that gain but still admirably quiet.
This one isn't very exotic, but here's the business end of my Micro Seiki DD-40, spinning some Buffalo Springfield with the AT33PTG/II ...