Stanton/Pickering

[richard]

Steve, you wrote,

It doesn't matter now anyway.  I sent it back (981).  After getting it in the mail, it turned out to be a scam.  The seller put 6800 EL stylus into it, after claiming it had the proper stereohedron type.  According to Kabusa these are incompatible.  I'll have to wait for the next time around.

Of course, KAB's right about this. It's amazing how often eBay sellers just put the wrong needle into a cartridge body, even when it's obvious that the needle won't be positively located against the cartridge body. "New Stylus!!!!!"

And the trouble here is that you were actually sent two interesting, useful products, each of which is useful when it's properly mated. With the right records, the lowly disco stylus D6800EL can sound mighty good. As Flavio just noted, going backwards in tip size evolution can surprise us with the rightness of sound that they can produce. But, of course, it's got to be used in a 680/681/XV15 body. And one of the two 981 bodies makes a great cartridge with its proper stylus. And as Gene mentioned, with only one exception, every samarium cobalt cartridge takes its own unique stylus (or tightly-limited range of them) if it's to deliver its intended tonal balance.

I set up a "screening turntable" for the purpose of checking out a couple hundred records that I just picked up. This machine will mostly play records that are still dirty. The only ones that'll get washed in advanced are records that have gotten wet and have jacket cardboard stuck into the grooves. As horrifying as they look, they seem to clean up
pretty nicely.

So, I mounted two cartridges in funky headshells for this, and put a couple of intentionally-wrong-ish styi into them. These needles are new. One is a 1.0 mil mono stylus (Pickering V15), which which I'll play most of the records, whether stereo or mono. If the record is fairly clean, it'll be played with an imitation Stanton stylus in a 681 body. This one is one of those "replaces everything" conicals with decent Japanese innards. My first response was, "What the hell? This thing sounds too good!" My choice of these needles was so that they'd be relatively expendable. But, well, not so much.

Now, although I made fun of the Zualum marketing hokus-pocus, I must come clean and say that I really do not know these needles. There is always the possiblity that they are actually excellent. The history of cartridges and styli has been so riddled with BS, I could not resist. One of these days, some really superb styli are going to come out of China, and perhaps these are them. Or not. The best way that I'll know what to think is when someone says that they've played some really difficult classcical music with them and likes what he heard. Or not.

[flavio81]

The Pickering XSV3000 is NOT an electrical match to the Stanton 881.  Its operating principle is the same but its coils are different in DC resistance and in inductance.

Seems it's no so clear.

Sadly i only have the specs for the 881S and the XSV/4000. They both are spec'd at 900 ohm and 510mH.
The CS100 and the XSV/5000 are specified at 500 ohm and 270mH.

Here somebody (stanton insider) posts that the XSV/3000 was originally electrically different but that after some time in production the XSV was changed so it was identical.

As design improvements were incorporated into the 3000, the Stanton 881-S was born. While the 881-S was slightly better than the original 3000, those changes silently went into production 3000's at the time, so that the two cartridges were in fact, identical (this was typical at the time with Pickering and Stanton, and actually a rather clever marketing ploy.)

(...) While Walter Stanton believed to his dying day that NO moving coil cartridge could ever be any good, none of us in the sales department ever agreed with him, and for the sake of our careers, wouldn't dare admit that either.

Source: http://forums.audioreview.com/showthread.php?t=27584

My XSV/3000 measures 900 ohm, if i recall correctly.

[flavio81]

Of course, KAB's right about this. It's amazing how often eBay sellers just put the wrong needle into a cartridge body, even when it's obvious that the needle won't be positively located against the cartridge body. "New Stylus!!!!!

Well said. But note that in this case the mismatch was putting a moving iron stylus assembly into a moving magnet cartridge. The result would be almost no output. Funny enough, this happened yesterday when i was buying the XSV: The seller fitted a 681 stylus and told me "sorry but the cartridge is dead". 

[flavio81]

Now, although I made fun of the Zualum marketing hokus-pocus, I must come clean and say that I really do not know these needles. There is always the possiblity that they are actually excellent. The history of cartridges and styli has been so riddled with BS, I could not resist.

LPgear sells good aftermarket stylus. I'm 90% sure their aftermarket stylus are made by JICO. I ordered once a hyperelliptical tip for a Technics cartridge and the result was very very good sounding, and yes i tested this with a lot of classical music (you're right --- this is the ultimate test.) The stylus was beautiful when looked at with a microscope. Their "Deft 2" cartridge is made by JICO and got very good reviews in vinylengine. I listened to some sound samples and yes, it was nice.

Now, i think they've shoot themselves a little in the foot with that "Zualum" moniker. Their target market for such styli know that cantilevers can be aluminium, titanium, berillium, boron, sapphire, diamond... They'd better call it "special aluminium", in my opinion.

JICO has replacement styli for the 881S (and similars), i bet the quality of the stylus tip itself is as good as the Stanton's were, but who knows if the cantilever is as good as the original one. But, in all fairness, everyone who has got the JICO Shibata replacements (in general) has been very satisfied.

[GP49]

Seems it's no so clear.

Sadly i only have the specs for the 881S and the XSV/4000. They both are spec'd at 900 ohm and 510mH.
The CS100 and the XSV/5000 are specified at 500 ohm and 270mH.

As per Stanton specifications table and individual spec sheets for Pickering, of the Samarium Cobalt models of Pickering/Stanton the ONLY match is one of those you mentioned (plus one CD-4 Quadriphonic model).

Pickering XSV4000 and Stanton 880/881 have the same DC resistance and inductance.  The Stanton/Pickering specifications I have for the XSV5000 and Stanton Collectors Series say they do not match, but the XSV5000 and XUV4500 do:

STANTON

980/981HZ:  800Ω, 450mH
880/881:  900Ω, 510mH
Collectors Series 100:  500Ω, 270mH

PICKERING

XSV3000: 600Ω, 270mH
XSV4000: 900Ω, 510mH
XSV5000: 600Ω, 290mH  (this was marketed as a stereo and CD-4 Quadriphonic cartridge with different loading requirements for each application)
XUV4500: 600Ω, 290mH (this was marketed as a CD-4 Quadriphonic cartridge)

Now you probably know more than most of the aftermarket stylus makers about these cartridge bodies.

The match between XSV4000 and Stanton 880/881 is useful in that there is a vendor who still has new, original Pickering XSV4000 styli available.  They will perform as specified in Stanton 880/881 bodies.

[flavio81]

STANTON

980/981HZ:  800Ω, 450mH
880/881:  900Ω, 510mH
Collectors Series 100:  500Ω, 270mH

PICKERING

XSV3000: 600Ω, 270mH
XSV4000: 900Ω, 510mH
XSV5000: 600Ω, 290mH  (this was marketed as a stereo and CD-4 Quadriphonic cartridge with different loading requirements for each application)
XUV4500: 600Ω, 290mH (this was marketed as a CD-4 Quadriphonic cartridge)

Thanks!! I'll measure my XSV/3000 again. It's easy to recall "9" instead of "6"!! Let's hope mine measures 600 ohm, since that means it has the lowest inductance (in my view, low inductance is always better).

[richard]

Three of us have tried mismatching needles and cartridges in this group. I believe that it's been between the 981 and the 881. I tried this both ways during the 1990s. The sound was unacceptable both ways, which leads me to think that there may be an additional difference beyond the electrical specs, such as magnet and coil/pole piece positions. I don't know this with certainty, and I'm not going to pull apart any of these needles and cartridges to find out.

One of these days, Daiwok will send his broken 881 stylus off to Expert for a cantilever/tip repair, so we can await his report. In looking over a few calibration cards for the 681s, I've noticed variations in Statnton's own measured electrical body readings, so I think that there's more to this than just those numbers.

[MrRogers]

The specifications for the 981HZS and the 881s are almost the same. Both are high impedance, samarium cobalt series with similar output.

 Why can't the D98s and D81s be interchanged between the two cartridges?

[GP49]

Different inductance means that under the same loading, the high frequency resonant peak will differ.  Pickering/Stanton intentionally made them different to match up with the high frequency responses of the styli for the best response when the proper stylus and body work together.

I have both a 980HZS and an 881S (also an 881E stylus) and can personally attest that the mismatches don't sound the same.  

[richard]

Rogers asked?

Why can't the D98s and D81s be interchanged between the two cartridges?

No reason why not. You'll hear music.
But, as I said earlier, the sound is wrong. It's a real shame to spend the money on these products and get sound well below what they're both capable of delivering.

I'm going to re-phrase what I wrote above. It's possible that there are more differences between these samarium cobalt cartridges, and their intended styli, than just the electrical body specifications. For example, the positions of the magnets in the cantilevers and the design of the coil assemblies (to mate properly with the styli) may be different, too.

Stanton had extremely tight-lipped upper management, and a lot of patents, many of which were for their styli. They were into secrets, something that I discovered first-hand a number of times. In fact, I had to gain much of my knowledge talking with them obliquely because the engineers were prohibited from just flat out answering my technical questions.

If you still want to know about mismatching these products, I encourage you to buy the original parts so that you can play with them and hear what we've described on this board a few times already. However, don't try this with aftermarket needles because you can't trust that they're properly designed for the cartridges that they're claimed to be for. For example, I have a few aftermarket needles for the Pickering 3000 and the Stanton 881, made around 1980. When I try them, I fully expect to hear that they're all correct for one of these two cartridges, and wrong for the other one. The reason being, simply, that the aftermarket company would have skimped on making their needles properly for both of them.

Hell, this is nothing new in the aftermarket needle industry. Right now, in fact, to evaluate a large number of used records, some of which are filthy, I'm using a moving iron stylus from the same series. It's said to be perfect for an entire range of needles, and it's obvious that it can be a decent replacement for only one of them. What's redidulous is that it's actually a decent needle. But I had to do some work to determine which Stanton stylus it was really intended to replace.

So, to understand why the substitutions won't be pleasant, we have to begin with the real parts. I always had the specification sheets on these cartridges, but I didn't look closely until around five years ago. I did the listening more than 15 years ago. The precise low-impedance stylus that I listened to was the elliptical, but I have both Stereohedrons for the low impedance body, also. There's only one body.

[willbewill]

Just scored a TL-3, I'm interested to find out how it compares to my TL-2S.

[wer]

Finally got a Co/Sm cartridge as well - a nice, shiny black XSV3000 
With a broken cantilever, of course, but then exotic New Zealand is not far away, where they stock Pickering's D2000 quadrohedral styli. The customs man willing, i should have a working cartridge in a couple of weeks.

[brownemi]

Nice fishing Wer.

I mounted my black XSV3000 with (stereohedron tip)  for the first time last night and was mightly impressed.

Could only compare with a NOS Empire 4000gold and the Pickering was sweet, a little less in dynamics and air but very refined nonetheless. Good luck with the stylus once up and running you should be happy! cheers

[wer]

Something to look forward to 

[lexi]

 The XV 15 seem to have shot up in last year. Saw them going last week for nearly £100 and £49 for stylus.  They were £30 not long over a year ago.