The long quest to educate one-self about past gems

[LMR-Miguel]

This is not the beginning, nor the end, but right now I'm having a blast discovering the FR-7 cartridge paired with a FR-64s heavy tonearm

If this isn't close to perfection, I don't know what is

The cartridge itself is a bit of an oddball statement from Ikeda San in his Fidelity Research years (the cartridge debuted in 1978 and features a unique internal construction with a cube-like coil former and a push-pull set of redundant coils/magnets per channel). Having heard a Koetsu Rosewood Signature lately in its place using the same arm, this FR-7 is tonaly more neutral, maybe as a slight downside I think the upper registers are not as smooth (veiled?) as the koetsu, while retaining a great deal of sounding natural

 

[LMR-Miguel]

another step within 70s japan: a Supex SD-909Mk2 cartridge, designed and built by Yoshiaki Sugano in his younger years before moving on to create his Koetsu brand.

 

[LMR-Miguel]

Now for direct comparison, the same track on different cartridges (output leveled to the best of my abilities manually with the input pots of my Scarlett interface),

cart #2, Supex SDX-1000 (with silver coil windings):

 

[LMR-Miguel]

cart #3, Koetsu Black Goldline:

 

[LMR-Miguel]

cart #4, Fidelity Research FR-7 (with silver coil windings):

 

[LMR-Miguel]

cart #5, Ortofon SPU Gold Reference:

 

[LMR-Miguel]

cart #6, EMT XSD-15:

 

[ThatStereoSound]

Beautiful system and videos.

 

[LMR-Miguel]

thank you

Beautiful system and videos.

 

[Vulcaniii]

Hi @LMR-Migel lovely system you have there. I also have Avantgarde Duo's and have done the same mod as you by moving the tweeter horns back. I'd tried various ways of achieving this and finally turned the tweeter horns upside down, moved it back to align with the rear hole and then used just two bolts to secure. Is that what you've done?

 

[LMR-Miguel]

Hi @LMR-Migel lovely system you have there. I also have Avantgarde Duo's and have done the same mod as you by moving the tweeter horns back. I'd tried various ways of achieving this and finally turned the tweeter horns upside down, moved it back to align with the rear hole and then used just two bolts to secure. Is that what you've done?

Hi Vulcaniii thank you for your comment, I'm not sure what you mean by "turning the tweeter horn upside down", do you mean rotating the tweeter cylinder 180 degrees so that the mounting holes align further back, and just used two bolts to secure? (that's what I did anyway)

 

[LMR-Miguel]

Meanwhile, I'm developing a new phono stage, I called it "Colares", it's made of two stages of triode strapped 6Z51Ps (High gm triode strapped HF Pentodes) with a low loss passive RIAA network, it's sounding like the "bee's knees"

 

[Vulcaniii]

Hi Vulcaniii thank you for your comment, I'm not sure what you mean by "turning the tweeter horn upside down", do you mean rotating the tweeter cylinder 180 degrees so that the mounting holes align further back, and just used two bolts to secure? (that's what I did anyway)

Yes that was what I was trying to explain. Your grasp on the English language is better than mine!