[78-L] When a garden variety cartridge just won't do

[DAVID BURNHAM]

Note to dl

I didn't win the lottery but I did drive to Chicago to pick up this six-pack a couple of years ago and found the sound from these eliptical styli very clean compared to previous styli.  I also purchased a set of Grado cartridges which had the 5 basic size conical styli, (skipping the 6th one, which I think is 8 mil for playing Pathays).  I got that set installed in head shells so that I just have to change the shell for the new size.  For the Stanton set I just have one mounted cartridge so I have to change the stylus.  I don't prefer this arrangement because of the wear and tear on the cartridge but the folks who sold it to me assured me that's not a problem.  I also got a Rek-o-Kut turntable from them which covers any possible need, (12 fixed speeds, including half speeds, a vary speed setting which pretty well covers any speed in between and able to accomodate 16 inch records).

If anyone's interested, my favourite all time cartridge was the Gold GE VRII.  With the sylus damped to prevent any vertical movement, I found surface noise very low compared to 78 stylus equipped stereo cartridges.  Then again, I haven't used one of these cartridges for over 40 years and my records were much newer then.

db