Stylus Retipping Service (phono cartridge) - specialist from Russia, Moscow

Beryllium is good because I had to spend a lot of money and eventually just find 1 cartridge priced 2.000 to equate or better the sound of a Shure V15III MR.

 

Yes, Warren gave me a big job

Yes, it was choice of a client.
I've got the same cartridge with original cantilever/stylus, so I was able to compare the sound of original cartridge and re-tipped one.
Re-tipped one sounds better because of Micro-Line diamond shape against elliptical diamond shape of original cantilever.
More details in sound, more air, much tighter bass, almost the same soundstage.
The key word - diamond shape. Micro-Line is doing his thing!
Weight of aluminum ATN-440 MLX cantilever of cause is higher than original cantilever that was made of hollow boron.
But the weak spot of Technics cantilever - elliptical diamond shape on a such good boron cantilever!

 

Because Roman's first job for me was SO good, installing a boron/MicroLine stylus onto a modest Denon cartridge, now I've gone crazy, sending him various oldie-but-goodie cartridges for exactly the same boron/MicroLine rebuild. I bought 10 of these styli, as a stock to draw from, to send to Roman whenever I find a broken cartridge that interests me.

 

In reply to Warren's mail - Er - no they do not. Aluminium is 2.59 x 10^7 and all the other numbers are x10^8 . I take it you're familiar with this form of writing things? So for example 10^6 is ten to the power of 6, or one million.

The *only* parameter of interest is the specific modulus - the Young's modulus (ie the stiffness) divided by the density. It turns out that not only is is the square of the speed of sound in the material, it also enters into the equations for beam (or cantilever) stiffness.

This is all boiled down into what Shure used to call Shank Performance Ratio, which is the stiffness/mass relative to a solid rod

 

Oh, I do understand the notation, but failed to notice the difference in exponent.

Please notice the two "?" marks for aluminum in my quote of you. What are those numbers? I suppose they are less than 1.0, something like 0.xx, right?

 

They are in the first table. The second table are the specific modulus of the other materials divided by the specific modulus of aluminium - to show how much better the other materials are by showing the factor that they exceed that of aluminium.

 

Ok, now I understand, thank you. The two "?" marks would be 1.0 then.

Great information. Shows that Boron is a little better than Beryllium. But I still suspect that if Beryllium is easier to machine than Boron, that may (in practice) give it an advantage over Boron. Just the ability to maintain tighter tolerances and the flexibility to provide a thinner wall may add value.

 

Do you mind sharing where you purchased the boron/microline stylus? I've never re-tipped a cart before but would like to for my Zu DL103. I have a Grado 8MZ stylus with no wear I'm contemplating on using for the re-tip. I've also reached out to Roman to find out options he has for cantilever/stylus too.

 

Well yes - but I thought the sentence that preceded the second table made it clear.

 

I cannot help you with that, because I bought the entire stock, and no more are available. Ask Roman, maybe he can recommend somewhere else to get one. But these were expensive, $300 each now, for the last ones I got.

 

You already became my best customer

 

Joe, sorry for the late reply. Check your PM, I just replied to you!

 

The cheapest ATN-150MLX right now on eBay is about $370
Unfortunatelly I dont know any other places where it's possible to find it cheaper.
Very soon they will disappear from the market at all, production stopped one year ago and Audio-Technica replaced it with aluminum cantilevers.

Another one very-very good alternative - NAGAOKA JN-P500 replacement made of boron with a "LINE-CONTACT" diamond shape!
Line-Contact is not on the level of Micro-Line, but this diamond shape is much better than typical elliptical.
Line-Contact on the same level with Shibata in my opinion. Also there are beliefs that Line-Contact - it's just Shibata, but under the different designation.
I can consider Line-Contact as a "gold middle" in terms of sound reproduction!
JN-P500 is still available on the market for affordable price, for about $260.

I think that I will start to use this JN-P500 replacement heavily.
The benefits:
- affordable price
- boron material
- very-very nice diamond shape

You just can't go wrong with a replacement like that!

 

I emailed Namiki a while back and they'll sell the Boron Cantilever w/ mounted Micro Ridge directly. Only one small problem. Minimum order of 100!

 

Interesting!
Same with Nagaoka. You can buy just boron cantilevers without plastic body for a less price, but minimum order should be 100pcs!

 

Namiki also has Diamond cantilever with MicroRidge. They manufacture them. The questions are (1) what is the price for 100, and (2) how can we pitch-in all together to buy 100? I would take 10 or more, but I am sure most of us would just want 1.

 

I'll reach out and see if I can get a price.

 

Perhaps that diamond cantilever is what I have seen retrofitted to Koetsu cartidges? Google finds a number of pictures, including a diamond cantilever on a DL103R!

Oh - and just found a limited edition Transfiguration Proteus with a 0.3mm diamond cantilever and microridge Transfiguration Proteus cartridge: The New D Edition - The Audiophile Man

So those cantilevers are certainly out there.

 

Forgot to mention other staggering properties of diamond - it has 6 times more thermal conductivity than copper, 11 times more than aluminium, and is an almost perfect electrical insulator.

 

I would beg to differ that elemental properties have no relevance to molecular shape and crystalline structure and ultimately mechanical properties but I suppose that is a conversation for a another day. And while it was simply a quick and dirty calculation (instead of using density), the amu certainly illustrated the point that Be is measurably lighter than B.

I like your table but GPA might be easier on the eyes.

Cheap and easy is not enough of a reason for me to use Aluminum.

You worked with Wharfedale, very cool! Did you design drivers are were you more in the material selection side of things?

I'm not sure that this is as much an issue for tweeter/dome construction, but when the diamond navigates the grooves, as you well know heat is generated. How can the thermal properties of a material not be a factor in performance, especially in the inner groove where there is more information per unit length. Beryllium and Boron both seem to have comparable thermal expansion but the thermal conductivity of Beryllium is almost an order of magnitude higher than Boron (at the crystalline level at least). But I also suppose that there are different "kinds" of Boron and the question then what Boron is used in cantilever construction?

How many Beryillium cantilevers have you tried/auditioned? I'm not being facetious. I was/am quite pleased with Boron but Beryllium really caught me by surprise. Yamaha no doubt auditioned many materials and yet landed on Beryllium, certainly not due to abundance or ease of use.

I don't believe machining would be the correct term for construction with Beryllium. With tweeters and mids I believe they are deposited. Would cantilevers also be deposited onto a sheet and then rolled into a tube? I honestly don't claim to know much about that process.

 

I remember learning in college Chemistry, that water has many properties that are absolutely unmatched in nature, such as lessening in density from its liquid state to its solid state (ice). It actually increases in size when frozen, which nothing else does. Something about its polarity also, and some properties that make it essential on our planet to be the basis for life.

Now from the description of diamond's properties by Just Walking, it seems that next on the list, for materials with properties of extreme distinction, is diamond. I REALLY want to try a rebuild by Roman, using a diamond cantilever, someday. In the meantime, I am exclusively sticking to boron, although I am trying titanium, in one case. It worries me that an earlier post places titanium, as a cantilever material, no better than aluminum.

Please expand the meaning of "AMU" and "GPA" into words. These lost me. Probably because my DTLB is limited by my IPTS and LTTTT.

I am guessing GPA means GigaPascals, to eliminate the exponent. Oh, and I just figured out that AMU is Atomic Mass - meaning what, mass for a given quantity of material, in other words, density?

 

No doubt resulting in IBS ; )

 

I agree it Is BS, but Interesting BS, none-the-less. Unless you meant:
Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
or
The International Biometric Society

Oh, and my "DTLB is limited by my IPTS and LTTTT" was short for:
Desire to Look Back (at previous posts to figure it out),
ImPatience To Search (the previous posts), &
Laziness To Take The Time.

But I ended up going back, anyway, to come up with GigaPascals and Atomic Mass.

 

Well, Namiki offer an aluminium cantilever, with 0.6mm (600um) diameter and a wall thickness of 5um!

The only company I know of who manufactured a thin-wall beryllium cantilever was Shure in the V15-V series. The manufacturing process is described in their patent number 4,473,897. Basically they cut a tiny piece of beryllium shim stock and wrapped it around a tiny rod in a jig, with an overlap. They then annealed it before adhesively bonding the overlap and pulling the rod out. But as you say, CVD is also a possibility, and I agree that was probably the way Yamaha made their drivers

And no - I have not heard a beryllium thin wall cantilever - but I'd like to! Boron is a really strange material, to the extent I have no idea how it is made into a rod, or precisely how a hole is drilled in it (if indeed it is). It is usually manufactured in fibre format, a bit like fibreglass. I'd be very interested in how it is converted into a solid rod.

I was CTO of Wharfedale, so I had oversight of the whole shooting match, including assisting with company acquisitions (Fane, Cambridge Audio, Lynx). That was long was before Stan Curtis took over and sold Wharfedale to China.

 

I'm not sure if Namiki is even doing boron anymore-it does not seem to show up on their website. Looks like aluminum, sapphire, sapphire tube and diamond.

I've had a couple of Ortofon MC 20 Supers retipped by Andy Kim in the past few years as well as a number of Denon 103R's done by Peter L at Soundsmith with ruby cantilevers before that.

Andy did one MC 20 Super with a boron cantilever and microridge and the other with a sapphire cantilever (solid I believe), also with microridge. I believe that both those assemblies may have come from Namiki but I am not totally sure. One thing that I am sure about is that the stylus on the sapphire cantilever is laser mounted and, as a result, has much lower tip mass than the boron cantilever. It is unbelievably fine and very impressive. I've read in the past (in a thread on Audiogon if I remember correctly) that it is, for some reason, extremely difficult to laser drill and or mount a stylus on a boron cantilever. Don't know how true that is-whether it is an impossibility or just very cost prohibitive, or if it is even true in fact, but the boron cantilever that I have has a much more traditional "look" to it in terms of where the stylus joins the cantilever. Much more "bulk" there due to the adhesive which is helping to attach the stylus to the cantilever.

I had done the boron first and really liked it; when I sent the 2nd in Andy told me he was unable to do the boron (not in stock) and recommended the sapphire, although he did say that it had the potential to be more fragile than the boron in use. I've been running the cartridge (sapphire MR) for about a year now with no problem though.

Initially, I was reluctant to do the sapphire, fearing that it would be more forward than the boron (it is an apples to oranges comparison on different cartridges but the boron retipped MC 20 Super was considerably less forward-much more mid hall-than the modified 103R which I had used previously with a ruby cantilever), not as quiet in the groove etc. The reading that I had done suggested that ruby (red) and sapphire (more whitish/translucent) are essentially the same in performance but, anecdotally, that has not been my experience.

For the most part, in my experience, the sapphire and boron cantilevers offer up pretty much the same kind of sonic performance (when compared on the same cartridge), with the sapphire offering perhaps a slight advantage in the detail department, which may in fact be a result of the laser mounting and the lower tip mass.

So beyond cantilever material there may well be other factors to consider, the biggest of which may well be how the diamond is mounted/attached to the cantilever which may well be a limitation of the cantilever material (in the case of boron) itself.

If there's a group buy on the diamond cantilevers with styli (microridge), I might consider that!