Need cartridge/stylus help

DCESpeedy

DCESpeedy

Active Member
I just bought a mint condition DUAL CS500 in the box and want to get an appropriate cart & stylus. I have an NAD 1300 preamp which will handle pretty much any combination of MM and MC. I currently have an old Pickering with a D7E stylus on it and it sounds pretty good. I also have the Stanton 890SA with the 2 DJ styluses I bought new for $40 about 14 years ago. But I really want to get started getting the most musically out of the new addition to my setup.

I currently am looking to stay below $200 for this first round and have some options. These are rounded up.

My Stanton 890SA w/JICO Shibata Stylus for $160
Tonar 555 (JT-555 SHIBATA) for $110 (new)
Denon DL-110 $125 (shipping included) (used about 50 hours)
Denon DL-103 $170 (shipping included) (new)

I am open to other suggestions as well.

BTW, I love this site and will be donating today. It has been one of the greatest resources in getting back to vinyl. And the knowledge and curiousness is astoundingly the best I have ever seen on a forum site!
 
I have been thinking the same thing. The Denon DL-110 seems like a deal and I've always wanted to try MC.

Couldn't find the tonearm mass, but I found a site the recommended between 5 and 6 grams so I put in 5g and 6g since I have the non-VTA carbon fiber and the original VTA headshell. I am a little lost though since I do not understand the compliance to resonant frequency. Is it better to have the green in the higher compliance area?

Thanks for the help Balifly. :)
 
Bought the Denon DL-110. I will post results and pics when I get it all setup so it may help someone else.

Thanks everyone!

Going to start studying about compliance and setting up MC now... Glad the prev owner of the CS5000 upgraded the cables so I can use any cable I want. :music:
 
The compliance bothered me, so reading more, I finally found an article stated that this would not work on the CS5000 because the tonearm is too light. But after measuring everything it will, but barely at RF between 10.71 hz (for 5g arm) and 10.343 hz (for 6g arm) for the carbon fiber headshell.

The compliance of the Denon is 8 @ 100hz, but the calulators state it should be at 10 hz so the compliance should be 1.5 to 2 times more.

NOTE: I know the tonearm is at least 5g since the bare carbon fiber headshell is 4g without any screws.

If the carbon fiber doesn't work, then I will use the VTA headshell which is a little heavier and should take me there.
 
Do use the heavier headshell, and you may want to add more weight - use a shim, or blutack a small coin to the headshell...
 
dlaloum said:
Do use the heavier headshell, and you may want to add more weight - use a shim, or blutack a small coin to the headshell...
Click to expand...

I was thinking that myself. I used to see the hippies I grew up with put coins on their DUALs. Now I know why.

If the resonant frequency drops the low frequency voltage too much, I could try a Linkwitz Circuit modified for small phono signals to compensate. Similar to the same circuit used for subwoofer design to enhance the low end capabilities of a subwoofer. The NAD 1300 has a high level pre output (up to 15V) that would compensate for any voltage level reductions to the higher end when flattening the response curve. I have already started a preamp/crossover project for fun and have a very quiet power supply completed for it. I have some EE background and my son's girlfriend is an EE/CS major at the Colorado School of Mines who loves analog design as well. Maybe too much for this, but I have been itching to do a challenging audio project.

If all else fails I could sell or trade it and start over. :thmbsp:

Thanks again for your help!
 
As new the Denon DL-160 homc cartridge comes with a flat metallic weight -1.45 gram.

Perhaps the Denon DL-110 comes with one as well. :scratch2:
 
Or I could machine one out of a non-ferrous metal sheet from Hobby Town. :)

I’m going to try to find some info on the difference between weighting the cartridge instead of the tone arm itself. I want to make sure the tone arm will not cause trouble because of its light weight. If so, I will need to look at a thin 1 to 1.5g wrap for it as well. I love challenges.

Now I know the reason I saw a few negative reviews where the buyer stated there was no bass.
 
True. My personal preference for bass is tight and clean. I have a very musical and clean subwoofer I built that reaches to 17Hz.

I just realized I had copper sheilding tape that I use for my projects. I just weighed and measured the tape and tone arm. I would be able to add 1.3g without getting in the way of the arm rest and the headshell fastener. And more if I want to use multiple layers. As long as I'm careful it will look okay.
 
I've been playing with parallel resistive loading on my 160. 1k helps a lot for putting its feet on the ground. Also, even though it's oh so wrong, using the MC-in also pulled it earthward a bit more.
 
cdk99 said:
I've been playing with parallel resistive loading on my 160. 1k helps a lot for putting its feet on the ground. Also, even though it's oh so wrong, using the MC-in also pulled it earthward a bit more.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info, I will look into this.

Have you ever heard of someone successfully (and carefully) using fill material in the tone arm to provide proper damping? I saw a method spoken of that uses a silicon fluid in the arm, but seems it would be too expensive for this TT.

Seems I got the effects of the resonance wrong. Since the cantilever vibrates at resonance there is no fixing with electronics. Luckily have a good set of junk test albums I can use to make sure no damage occurs to good albums until I get it figured out.
 
I have used this cart on two arms that are probably too light by the numbers. On the Luxman I decided to try the included weight/spacer by blu-tacking it on top of the headshell for comparison. On both arms I like it better with the weight.

On the Thorens, I discovered that the dynamic balancing by spring varied widely over the travel of the arm, so I disabled it and weighted the arm to make it possible to static balance. I added a strip of lead to the arm, again with blu-tack because it's an experiment, and that has resulted in more predictable tracking behavior. I think a side effect might be some damping, it sounds so much more planted now. But the VTF being constant might be the largest part of it.

I went out of my way to use uneven dabs of blu-tack so that I would discourage harmonics, but it does make it look a bit kindergarden. My next move is to form a nicer-looking half-round to add to the arm than my hammered-flat solder. The weight is close to the pivot.

For internal arm damping I've read of using lengths of balsa or foam. A search here and on Vinyl Engine might pull up more. I may go there next since the Thorens has a hollow aluminum tube. Why these folks didn't use magnesium (which isn't resonant) instead of aluminum...probably so they didn't need to put No Smoking signs on them.
 
cdk99 said:
I've been playing with parallel resistive loading on my 160. 1k helps a lot for putting its feet on the ground. Also, even though it's oh so wrong, using the MC-in also pulled it earthward a bit more.
Click to expand...

I found a site that discusses the resistive loading at http://daveyw.edsstuff.org/vinyl/loading/. Interesting to note that the Denon DL-160 likes about 1k more than the standard 47k. I don't know if I can use the input safely on my MC since the overload is 20Hz /1kHz / 20kHz -> 1.0 / 10 / 100 mv. I may need to look at voltage regulation if I try to use it. I have some small variable voltage regulator +/- pairs around.

NOTE: For those that do not know about electronics and safely modifying electronic equipment, please use something cheap to learn on before trying this or have someone experienced do it for you. I'm comfortable with this because I started my career with a soldering iron in my hand. Even with that background I have blown perfectly good equipment. Not fun.
 
cdk99 said:
I have used this cart on two arms that are probably too light by the numbers. On the Luxman I decided to try the included weight/spacer by blu-tacking it on top of the headshell for comparison. On both arms I like it better with the weight.

On the Thorens, I discovered that the dynamic balancing by spring varied widely over the travel of the arm, so I disabled it and weighted the arm to make it possible to static balance. I added a strip of lead to the arm, again with blu-tack because it's an experiment, and that has resulted in more predictable tracking behavior. I think a side effect might be some damping, it sounds so much more planted now. But the VTF being constant might be the largest part of it.

I went out of my way to use uneven dabs of blu-tack so that I would discourage harmonics, but it does make it look a bit kindergarden. My next move is to form a nicer-looking half-round to add to the arm than my hammered-flat solder. The weight is close to the pivot.

For internal arm damping I've read of using lengths of balsa or foam. A search here and on Vinyl Engine might pull up more. I may go there next since the Thorens has a hollow aluminum tube. Why these folks didn't use magnesium (which isn't resonant) instead of aluminum...probably so they didn't need to put No Smoking signs on them.
Click to expand...

This is awesome information. Thanks so much. :thmbsp:
 
Vinyl Engine had the CS5000 tonarm mass. It is 8.5g which is better than I thought! :thmbsp: With the cart at 4.8 and the headshell at 7.8 (weighed this morning) total mass = 21.1 which is +much+ better. So if I multiply the compliance accordingly:

8cu x 1.5 = 12 the RF is 10Hz
8cu x 2 = 16 the RF is 8.62Hz

This makes it fall right in the sweet spot. However cdk99 pointed out that the tonearm is made of aluminum and may cause problems anyhow. But I will wait and see.

Sorry for the rambling, but I want to capture all this so others can benefit.

Thanks again everyone.

Off for today...
 
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