Nat
11-15-2006, 08:13 PM
I'll try to get some pictures, but I'm too excited to wait for them to announce the birth of my frankencartridge -- a recantilevered Denon DL301.
I have a bunch of old moving coil cartridges, some my own, but most given to me by SoundMill of Mt. Kisco NY. Some were simply worn (or not -- one was a Yamaha MC-1s with a good stylus, and a delightful cartridge, until I wore it out). But most have busted or mangle cantilevers. And somewhere I came up with some anonymous stylus assembly with a good cantilever and stylus. The idea is hatched!
And soon the cantilever and stylus were cut from the holder and filed so that the flattened section was gone. And I poked around for a cartridge with a cantilever onto which the section will fit -- it turned out to be a DL 301. My first attempt got it on slightly cocked, but it seemed very secure. Which was promising, so I carefully pulled it off, clipped off the excess bit of cantilever in the Denon and pushed the replacement on gently. Seeing that it was aligned properly, I pushed hard. Then I transferred a bit of super glue to the joint with a tootpick. The new cantilever is a little longer than the old, but the stylus guard goes over, so I hoped for the best.
So today I slapped it into an ongoing project in my office -- a Rek o Kut N 34 H with a MicroPoise arm on it.
The Rekokut is a two speed belt drive with a big ol Pabst motor with a speed adjustment that simply stretches the belt more or less, mounted on a iron sheet plopped onto a nice wood cabinet and attached with two sided tape(!). Annoyingly, there is a aluminim disk proclaiming 'stereo table' glued (I hope) around the spindle, so no regular mat will fit, and the original mat is not only hardened, but it only supports the record halfway out, so both the inner and outer parts are free to resonate, and the record itself slips easily. So I replaced the mat with a piece of foam core -- who knows whether this is actually a good material?, but its high enough to support the record over the annoying disc.
The arm had been badly handled -- one of the vertical bearings was mashed, and one of the ball bearings was missing (and its smaller than all the bearings I have for replacing clickstops on camera lenses). But I put the remaining four in, reseated the retaining ring, and then put a blob of STP on both sides to damp. Seems to work well.
I was worried about horizontal friction, so I was using a Stanton 500 which tracked at 2-5 grams to get a sense of what the system sounded like (punchy, bass prominent and a bit coarse treble, but punchy with real weight in the low end -- did I say punchy?) I'm also using the thing in my office with one of the Sherwood Tanglewoods I was given by Mark Hardy blocked by a chair, and the other by a table, so no underground press approved impressions can be claimed.
But the cartridge (run through the little Ortofon in line transformer) worked, and sounded good -- maybe some treble resonance, but so far I'm only working with worn records, so it might be the record, not the cartridge -- but the strong clear bass seems to be there, but with much more inter instrument silence, and lots of detail, without shouting about it.
Hard to say, but it may actually be good! Not as good as the original, but retipping wasn't going to happen, so anything would be better than simply sitting in a drawer until it got tossed in the trash.
I bet a lot of you AKers have similar possible combos in you possession, and obviously almost all of us have more enthusiasm than we have sense. Anyone else want to try this?
I have a bunch of old moving coil cartridges, some my own, but most given to me by SoundMill of Mt. Kisco NY. Some were simply worn (or not -- one was a Yamaha MC-1s with a good stylus, and a delightful cartridge, until I wore it out). But most have busted or mangle cantilevers. And somewhere I came up with some anonymous stylus assembly with a good cantilever and stylus. The idea is hatched!
And soon the cantilever and stylus were cut from the holder and filed so that the flattened section was gone. And I poked around for a cartridge with a cantilever onto which the section will fit -- it turned out to be a DL 301. My first attempt got it on slightly cocked, but it seemed very secure. Which was promising, so I carefully pulled it off, clipped off the excess bit of cantilever in the Denon and pushed the replacement on gently. Seeing that it was aligned properly, I pushed hard. Then I transferred a bit of super glue to the joint with a tootpick. The new cantilever is a little longer than the old, but the stylus guard goes over, so I hoped for the best.
So today I slapped it into an ongoing project in my office -- a Rek o Kut N 34 H with a MicroPoise arm on it.
The Rekokut is a two speed belt drive with a big ol Pabst motor with a speed adjustment that simply stretches the belt more or less, mounted on a iron sheet plopped onto a nice wood cabinet and attached with two sided tape(!). Annoyingly, there is a aluminim disk proclaiming 'stereo table' glued (I hope) around the spindle, so no regular mat will fit, and the original mat is not only hardened, but it only supports the record halfway out, so both the inner and outer parts are free to resonate, and the record itself slips easily. So I replaced the mat with a piece of foam core -- who knows whether this is actually a good material?, but its high enough to support the record over the annoying disc.
The arm had been badly handled -- one of the vertical bearings was mashed, and one of the ball bearings was missing (and its smaller than all the bearings I have for replacing clickstops on camera lenses). But I put the remaining four in, reseated the retaining ring, and then put a blob of STP on both sides to damp. Seems to work well.
I was worried about horizontal friction, so I was using a Stanton 500 which tracked at 2-5 grams to get a sense of what the system sounded like (punchy, bass prominent and a bit coarse treble, but punchy with real weight in the low end -- did I say punchy?) I'm also using the thing in my office with one of the Sherwood Tanglewoods I was given by Mark Hardy blocked by a chair, and the other by a table, so no underground press approved impressions can be claimed.
But the cartridge (run through the little Ortofon in line transformer) worked, and sounded good -- maybe some treble resonance, but so far I'm only working with worn records, so it might be the record, not the cartridge -- but the strong clear bass seems to be there, but with much more inter instrument silence, and lots of detail, without shouting about it.
Hard to say, but it may actually be good! Not as good as the original, but retipping wasn't going to happen, so anything would be better than simply sitting in a drawer until it got tossed in the trash.
I bet a lot of you AKers have similar possible combos in you possession, and obviously almost all of us have more enthusiasm than we have sense. Anyone else want to try this?