ADC's Bricks

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"Brick" is the affectionate nickname owners give ADC cartridges Of A Certain Age. Brick describes the shape of ADC's cartridges from 1968 to just before the XLM hit in 1972. Their bodies weren't light by modern standards, and this, combined with their high compliance, made it difficult for most people to hear them at their best, but their brick-like bodies at least made it easy to set them level and perpendicular to the record's surface and line them up with protractors. With only a few exceptions, they provided a lot of performance for relatively little cash and they tracked at jaw-droppingly low vertical tracking forces (VTF). I've had a 10E Mk IV for 40 years, but I wanted to test a hypothesis, which was that it didn't matter which Brick you had, you could stick just about any other Brick's stylus on it and it would work fine.

[Spoiler Alert: this was a working hypothesis, not a belief. You know what they say about guesses that look good on paper.. But read on. The awkward fumbling and frantic rethinking may entertain you. I've gone back to correct any outright howlers that might confuse people from the future who might be reading the thread for information.]

Brick styli seemed to come in two flavors: a less-compliant version designed to track at about 1.2g, and a very compliant one that was designed to track at 0.7g.

The 1971 10E Mk IV came with the 0.7g stylus, which means it's really only suited for the lowest-mass arms-- not the perfect match for my Technics SL-1700 Mk2. So I got a NOS 1.2g R-20XE stylus for it, and this works fine on the Technics. The sound is very mellow and smooth. [See later discoveries about the 10E-4 once I acquired an inductance meter]

I'm ordering an R-27 stylus, which is supposed to be the 1.2g flavor-- When it arrives I'll compare it to my original 10E Mk IV stylus. Then I'll try to collect as many of the Bricks as I can, just to see what's what.

I have several of the "bricks". A 220 which I got in 1969 to replace the ceramic cartridge on my VM changer (it was unsuccessful because of the hum it picked up from the unshielded motor), 220XE, 250XE, 90XE.

Almost got a 10E Mk IV on eBay once but was not in a position to snipe when the auction ended and lost it.

I'm pretty sure a green dot on the stylus means an elliptical and a red dot means a conical.

I agree with your assessment of their sound.

Doug

Are there HE or Shibata stylus that would fit the ADC 250XE cartridge? :scratch2:
The original stylus on my ADC 250XE cartridge should be replaced.
It came with one of my second hand turntables.

No thread about ADC bricks would be complete without the 25 and 26. One of my friends had a 26 on a miracord 750 - it sounded great but you could see the stylus vibrate - the tonearm resonance was in the single digit range - very massive cartridge and very high compliance. (One of the stereo rags at the time said you need a tonearm with about 1-2 grams effective mass to get the resonance in the 10hz range).

Heres a pic of some. three different stylus types represented.
Left to right its:
-Model 26 & 220XE these use the same styus.
- Dont know the model but have some ADC stylus that fit that are marked for the "660,770 or 809" models so this is one of those.
- Unknown model and a 10E Mk2. Both use the same stylus.




..

Thanks for the pictures, resound.

I forgot I have a 660 (correction: it's a 770) too. It's like the middle one above except it's light gray with black metal and a red stylus assembly.

Your unknown model is a 220 like mine. I think it only cost $9.95 in 1969. Tracking force of 2-5 grams.

Doug

I wish there were line-contact styli to fit the Bricks. Even Jico has nothing more sophisticated than an elliptical for them. But at least you won't wear out your records using a 3x7 elliptical at 0.7g, unless it mistracks.

resound, thanks for the family photo. Today I noticed your photo got messed up, so here's a slightly jazzed-up version of your original:

L to R: 26, 220XE and stylus (green dot), Point Four, 220, 10E.

The unknown one, the black one in the center of the photo, is the once-famous Point Four, ADC's first induced-magnet cartridge from 1964. It predates the Bricks by about 5 years, so I call it a "pre-Brick".

The red one uses a similar but slightly later pre-Brick body and is indeed a 220 (1967), originally available only with a conical stylus. Very popular back then. Consumer Reports loved it.

The black one to the right of the 220 is the 1966 10E; it replaced the Point Four. Its body was a high-inductance version of the 220's.

By the time the 10E line got to the Last Brick, the 1971 10E Mk IV [not shown] it was using the same body style as the the 26, above, only black, like the 25.

The similarly-named red 1967 220 and the 1970 true-Brick 220X [looks like the 220XE in the photo but with a red sticker] are physically very different cartridges. Pre-Brick styli, which, like the later XLMs, contain slotted (channeled) magnets, are not interchangeable with Brick styli, which don't have magnets in their stylus grips, although they may look like they do-- the channeled round disk in a Brick stylus is soft iron, not a magnet. A Brick's magnet is instead embedded in the cartridge body, visible as the dark circles or disks in the photo.

Note: the model 26 and the 220XE do not use the same stylus, despite what the photo may imply. The styli are, however, mechanically interchangeable, and therein lies the tale, the quest, of this thread.

sregor, you would've had a good laugh watching my AR turntable trying to use the 10E Mk IV. Way too much arm bearing friction made the cartridge body appear to stand still while the stylus and cantilever wagged up and down and from side to side.

Can anyone tell me definitively what the difference is between the 26 and 27 styli? Info on the web is consistently inconsistent.

[SPOILER: The 26 and 27 were both less-elaborate versions of the TOTL 25. Unlike the 25, the 26 came with only one stylus, the 25's 3x7 elliptical, but in white plastic instead of black. The 27 came with the same elliptical in a less-compliant suspension, so think of it as a VLM to the 25/26's XLM.]

My 10E MkIV stylus used a big fat cone-shaped aluminum bushing with a dab of diamond on the very tip. Does anyone know which styli used nude mounting? [SPOILER: the ADC 25 began with tapered cantilevers and true-nude diamonds. The 26 may have begun the same way, but ADC changed from unglued square-shank nudes to glued round-shank ones, and from tapered cantis to straight as time went on. With any of them, what you get depends on when they were made.]

I base this question on a Feb 1971 test by Gramophone magazine of the 25 and its 3 styli (plus comparisons with the 220X, 990XE and 550XE) which contains this little tidbit:

"...The diamond styli on the more expensive models [presumably the 25] are naked stones, accurately ground and polished and bonded directly into the tapered cantilever tube. It is claimed that they are grain oriented..." [emphasis added] The article goes on to say that the "naked stone" styli have higher resonant frequencies, which we'd expect, and a smoother sound.

Well, we'll see what the ADC 27's stylus looks like when it arrives...

differences between the 220XE and 27 styli

Photographs tomorrow, but I wanted to confirm that the 27 is a 1.2g stylus with high compliance. However, it's not a "naked stone" that's on the end of this particular cantilever, it's the usual diamond-in-a-bushing.

A difference: my "220XE" 's cantilever is thicker, ie, bigger in diameter and presumably more massive than the 27's. The slotted round metal insert (not a magnet-- flux focuser? I'm going with that) just above the cantilever is brass-colored in the case of the 25, 26, 27 and the 10E Mk IV. It's silver for the "220XE" 's stylus, and for all the lesser styli.

So the search continues for brick styli with nude mounting. All fingers are starting to point to the now-rare ADC 25. Fooey. I'm a Cheap [and Lazy] Bastard, and I want something easy to find, and cheap.

Yes, there are no other styli series more confusing than the ADCs (OK maybe the Empires \:^).

There are consistent (almost) mistakes among the styli suppliers between the 220 and 220XE. They usually state the same stylus replacement for both even though, as wualta said, they are completely different.

And, there are so many different ones that will fit several cartridges that it is almost impossible to determine which one is, in fact, the correct one for a given cartridge.

Doug

Confusing, yes, though Pickering and Empire leave ADC standing in the Confuse The Customer Game. But 220/220XE ignorance isn't the only mistake. As we've seen, just because the stylus will fit doesn't mean it's the correct one, the one that was voiced for the cartridge. Some of the sellers are a wee bit careless about that. Understatement of the year, right?

On the left is what was sold to me as a NOS R-20XE [UPDATE: The butterscotch color is because it's from a house-brand model called the 272, a 220XE clone. I now have a "realer" R20XE stylus [middle]; it's beige with a green dot, as expected. Same fat cantilever and diamond mounting.] On the right is the NOS R-27. Notice the relative slimness of the cantilever and the different color of the round metal "flux lens" in the center. On the far right are the 26 and 27 so you can compare. Same body (electrically/magnetically) for the 25/6/7, different styli. The 27's stylus is less compliant than the 25/26's.

If you squint hard and think lovely thoughts, you can just make out the difference in the diamonds' bushings. It looks as if the R-27's has been machined down in an attempt to minimize the mass. The R-27 and 10E Mk IV styli are identical-looking in every respect except for the plastic color; neither diamond is nude mounted. Partying like it's 1969, the R-27 stylus tracks nicely at 0.75g but can go up to 1.25g.
minor clarifying edit to the Mar 2020 edit

Boy, those housings look a lot darker than the ones on my similar styli. Mine are more of an off-white with one being a little lighter than the other.

Mine are pretty close to matching the color of the cartridge bodies although my 250XE is a tad darker than my 220XE.

Doug

Yeah, that butterscotchy interloper is a private-label equivalent/clone.

Just found... An auction I stupidly missed for an ADC 25, complete with this:


Now, if the 26 really is the cost-reduced version of the 25 (only 1 stylus instead of 3)...

Milk chocolate ?

That 25's cantilever is tapered too, just as the Gramophone article said. [UPDATE: That one's is, but some of them aren't, as I hinted earlier. Read on...]
The search is on to get specs and photos of the 26-- hoping the 26 is nothing more than the 25 with only one stylus instead of three. Or do the impossible and find an affordable R-25E [UPDATE: The 25's styli have 3-digit names. The 3x7 elliptical for the 25 is called R-251].

R-26

The cantilever on this example isn't tapered, but the diamond is indeed nude mounted. It's the most crudely-done nude mount you'll ever see, but technically it's nude. What looks like a bushing is more like an eyelet. UPDATE: I have since obtained other 26 examples with beautiful clear diamonds properly "nuded".
R-27 on the left.
The other interesting thing about the R-26 is the bubblegum-colored rubber suspension block (not shown). All the others I've seen have been black.

I think the ones with no dot were the extra super-duper signature statement platinum titanium boron beryllium version.

\:^)

Doug

I wasn't going to mention the evident dotlessness, because of the shame. No, actually, the 26 and 27 styli are dotless, since there's only one of each of them. But the occasional 25 stylus will show up having forgotten its dot, confusing everybody.

I should point out before going further that unless you've got a 25, 26, 27 or 10E Mk IV stylus installed, Bricks are NOT the cartridges you should use to test your most difficult, hard-to-track records, especially if your arm is not motion damped, either passively or actively. Considering that most LPs are almost never mirror-flat, the problem is more due to the high compliance interacting with tonearm mass causing the cartridge to bounce, however slightly-- and thus the VTF to vary drastically-- than to the cheaper Bricks' inherent tracking ability. If you're tracking at a gram or less, small perturbations in VTF start to become important.

Finally stumbled on a Model 25 stylus. Wait'll you see how they tapered the cantilever. And the diamond! Oy! Photos coming soon..

OK, groovy.



Doug