Just wanted to share a very positive experience with the Jurij's 12'' wooden banana arm in combination with an Ortofon Kontrapukt C that has just been rettipped by Expert Stylus Co with their sapphire cantilever + Paratrace stylyus.
The short version of the story is that the combo sounds spectacularly good.
I hear - or rather feel - bass as I never heard/felt it befroe from my vinyls. There is an incredible ('cavernous') soundstage. Highs and mides have real body as well as definition. Last but not least, I hear explosive dynamics as well as endless note decays.
These are all signs of a very accurate and fine information retrieval allowed by tonearm and Lecon GL75.
The slightly longer story is that it took me quite a few steps to get there. They involved a lot of fiddling with cartridge, tonearm, phono preamp and cables. I will detail the steps concerning cartridge and tonearm only.
Cartridge wise:
Ortofon specs for VTF are 2.2-2.7g, with 2.5g as optimum. Expert Stylus' in their invoice letter states that 1.9-2.0g VTF is recommended. Whilst it is true that the refurbished Kontrapunkt C tracks flawlessly at 1.9-2.0g, the sound was very much lacking in bite and definition, while displaying a grainy character in the mid-highs and highs - not dissimilar from the sound signature of poor transistor amps.
The AT OC9XSL sounded like a far superior cartridge. Until I started experimenting with higher VTF. At the Ortofon recommended 2.5g things snapped into focus and everything improved: clean and pure mids, bass impact and texture, soundstage, etc etc
I will check if over time, as suspension and stylus settle, there are benefits in lowering back the VTF - I will report back
I use an Origin Live Cartridge Enabler spacer between cartridge and headshell. This cleans up highs and mid-bass very effectively, although at the slight expense of some bite on the highs. Not overtightening the cart mounting screws seems essential to get max detail retrieval.
Tonearm wise:
First, I confirmed that a bit of anti-skating helps bringing focus and definition all around. Best antiskating setting, despite the 2.5g VTF was at minimum force - i.e., antiskating wire and weight hooked on the very first notch on the little antiskating arm
The lateral counter-weight does influence the sound - at least in my system, despite everything being perfectly levelled. Anyway, unscrewing the weight until it reached the far outer extreme of its threaded support yields the best results: with a further increase in focus and bass control.
Lastly, having eliminated any resonance in my "wooden jewel box" makeshift tonearm mount system, I found that tightening vertical bearings and the screw at the base of the tonearm (the one that allows height adjustment) brought further increase in definition and dynamics. The lesson seems to be: tighten (not over-tighten!) everything in and around the tonearm if mechanical isolation from air and shelf born vibrations is very good; otherwise judiciously untighten things to introduce further mechanical isolation. The former scenarios delivers maximum resulution and best dynamics.
Now, considering the Ortofon sold for almost £2,000 several years ago, I would say that there certainly is incredible mileage and ability to scale-up in the 12'' banana arm!
cheers, C
