Cagey's cunning cartridge quiz

Denon

It sounds better than it should do to my ears, but I don’t have a standard cartridge to compare it with.

Nope. Aluminium cantilever. Elliptical stylus. VTF 1.5 to 2.5g

You will laugh at me when you find out what it is....

Yep. It’s an AT95e.
I had an old stylus lying around, along with a case for a Denon mod.
I bought a brown (?) AT95 body on eBay for €10 delivered, and “built it” by super glueing the body into the Denon shell, and cutting down the stylus to fit.
It sounds bloody awesome. I am thinking of getting a better stylus for it. One of the new AT VM95 ones should fit, after being chopped about.

Either that, or I want to find a cheap HE stylus or better.

I am toying with the idea of getting a ML.

I have cut down the Shibata stylus housing and fitted it to the metal bodied AT95. It sounds really good for the cost involved.
I am wondering if a wooden body (such as ebony) would be worth doing.

The only issue is that the cut down stylus is a bit fiddly to handle.

The world's best bang for buck cart ..,..,Goldie 1042.

It pissed on Koetsu's.

At £325 for the 1042?
My AT95SA frankencart has cost me about half that, and I reckon it will give the 1042 a run for it’s money, and may be even better it.

Not heard that either.

I do have some classics that are pretty good.
Technics EPC-205 complète with original stylus assembly and a NEO SAS.
AT20SS with a spare SLa stylus.
AT150ea.

I don’t think MCs are entirely necessary myself.

Blah blah blah, Cagey is right Jammy.  Had a 1042 before it went fitz and lost a channel, good detail yes, to clinical yes.  I still prefer my Orto Blue & AT 95 and for the price no contest.
IMHO nowt wrong with a Orto red, blue, AT95, Excel ES 70S or a Sumiko Pearl, dozens of good non expensive cartridges out there.

300 quid for any cartridge are you insane.

I am going to put the cartridge into the aluminium head shell with wax to see if it makes a difference.

A y thoughts about the benefit of an ebony cartridge body over the aluminium one?

Next step after is likely to be a ML stylus from the AT-VM95. In fact, I have read that the bodies are improved, so I will see if it will be possible to do the same thing with the updated cartridge.

So a VM95E was delivered about an hour ago.
Naturally, the first thing to do is to break it down into the different pieces of body, mount and stylus.
I then removed the AT-95E from the Denon replacement housing, cleaned the body and superglued the new VM95 into place.
This time I went a step further and I have filled the gaps between the Denon housing with wax.

So the cartridge is now fully “built” and Yello “Toy” is playing to “burn” in the new cartridge body.
It was a relatively easy process to do. To avoid filling the VM95 with hot wax, I sealed it up with some aluminium tape.
The advantage of hot wax is that it pours easily, and excess is easy to remove with a knife or similar.

It does not sound too bad at all, but I can’t say it is massively different to the AT95, but it is still early days yet.

The repair bill for an MC cart is certainly unsurpassed.