Stanton LZS and Pickering XLZ

[GP49]

I recently bought a 885LZS which was apparently NOS. It turned up today looking like such other than the attached stylus is a D6800EL. Obviously the EL stands for th eliptical and not the stereohedron needle- D88s I thought I was buying. Firstly, is this stylus suitable and if so how much difference would there be with the lesser stylus- pure opinion is fine? I listen mainly to bass heavy rock/electronic 80's style music. thanks Michael

Besides the substitution of the less-expensive elliptical for a Stereohedron in the D88S, the D6800EL stylus is totally unsuitable for the 885LZS.  

The 885LZS is a low-impedance moving magnet cartridge. It has only coils in the body and its magnet in the stylus.

The D6800EL is the stylus for a 680EL, a moving iron cartridge.  It has its magnet in the body and just a slug of nonmagnetized iron in the stylus.

Without a magnet SOMEPLACE, the combination will have no output.

Hopefully you can get a refund.  Send it back and don't buy from that unknowledgeable seller ever again.   That seller doesn't understand that it is not enough that the two just FIT together.  If he claims he listened to it, he's a liar.

And tell us who it is so none of the rest of us buy there, either.  There is no way to put a good "spin" on what has happened.

[richard]

Let me offer a different suggestion. Keep your D6800EL stylus and get your hands on the right body for it. This needle happens to be outstanding for the music that you like!  In fact, I'm going to submit that it's going to sound better for you than the super-duper ultimate-performance cartridge body that you received.

This is not an issue of "what's the best cartridge in the world?" What's significant is how the stylus contacts the groove walls of the record, and additional arcane issues such as the level of modulation in the grooves, condition of the records, etc., etc.  For your records, the D6800EL is a winner!

Stanton has probably changed the finger grip shape for this stylus. Other than that, it's been the disco stylus of choice for more than 30 years! I bought two of them a few years ago, tried one, and it surprised me with how good it sounds. Its tip size is a broad elliptical, .4 x .7 mils. It glides quietly over scratches and even dirt. This is a great needle when you've been buying used records, especially records that have been badly-kept.

Getting excited yet?

It looks like some eBay joker has been screwing around trying for maximum profit by removing the needles from these bodies and selling them separately, substituting incorrect ones (as Gene just pointed out). This is the second post on our board about the same thing: someone selling a samarium cobalt body with a moving iron stylus. It's too coincidental.

A great many of the 6800EL needles have been sold; a few years ago, it seemed that disco circles had been flooded with them. They've been sold in bulk packages because the DJs lose them and manage to break them (despite their toughness).

Anyway, what I'm saying is keep the needle, get the right body for it, and sell on the low-impedance cartridge to someone whose musical needs might benefit from its performance (assuming that they have the right needle for it). The cartridge body that you need is any Stanton 680, a 681, or a Pickering XV15.

[brownemi]

Guys thank you for you expert feedback, its much appreciated. Unfortunately the seller seems confused and I will give him the opportunity to rectify the situation as it seems genuine. It wasnt an ebay purchase either.

Will update as this one progresses    cheers Michael

[brownemi]

The seller has been very good about rectifying the situation but I fear may be still not right on his game.

He acknowledges that I need a steroehedron stylus and has offered me a no cost NOS Pickering D3000 stylus which he says is a stereohedron one.  Is this right as it appears from looking at the posts to be an Elip model. Also, does it work with a 885LZS?

Richard I like your thoughts re keeping the 6800 and getting a new body- one cant have enought carts! cheers Michael

[GP49]

The seller has been very good about rectifying the situation but I fear may be still not right on his game.

He acknowledges that I need a steroehedron stylus and has offered me a no cost NOS Pickering D3000 stylus which he says is a stereohedron one.  Is this right as it appears from looking at the posts to be an Elip model. Also, does it work with a 885LZS?

Richard I like your thoughts re keeping the 6800 and getting a new body- one cant have enought carts! cheers Michael

The Pickering XSV3000 is a moving magnet samarium cobalt cartridge, and a Stereohedron stylus.  A complete Pickering XSV3000 is an excellent cartridge.  That NOS XSV3000 stylus, if it is being represented correctly by the seller, would fetch quite a good price all by itself.  The good news: the combination of the XSV3000 stylus in the 885LZS body WILL make music (or noise...depending on what's on the turntable!).    

How accurate will it sound?

The Pickering XSV3000 and Stanton 881S bodies differ in their coil windings.  Different DC resistance, different inductance.  Each was designed to work with its own body so that the physical characteristics of the stylus and the electrical characteristics of the body along with the specified resistive and capacitive loading, complement each other for correct high frequency response.  

This MAY be less of an issue with a low-impedance body such as the 885LZS.  There is much less interaction with resistive and capacitive loading in the low-impedance bodies.  I don't have enough experience with the non-matching combinations involving the low-impedance bodies to be sure of how critical the internal matching between body and stylus may be.  

[brownemi]

Thanks GP I can rest easy that its a goer. I will report on it how it sounds when I receive it. The seller did try it this morning and thought it sounded great with another 885 body he had. Thanks for the great advice.

[richard]

Gene wrote,

The Pickering XSV3000 and Stanton 881S bodies differ in their coil windings.  Different DC resistance, different inductance.  Each was designed to work with its own body so that the physical characteristics of the stylus and the electrical characteristics of the body along with the specified resistive and capacitive loading, complement each other for correct high frequency response. 

This MAY be less of an issue with a low-impedance body such as the 885LZS.  There is much less interaction with resistive and capacitive loading in the low-impedance bodies.  I don't have enough experience with the non-matching combinations involving the low-impedance bodies to be sure of how critical the internal matching between body and stylus may be. 

That's an interesting slant, Gene. I have both of these items but don't have any of the stuff set up, and won't be able to try them out for a long time. So, Michael will probably be the one to tell us the soonest. Even if the stylus and body work fairly well, I'd expect some deviation from the intended performance. I read someplace that someone tried a similar substitution and liked the result. On the other hand, it's possible that the response was thrown off and that the listener liked the skewed response.

Michael, in case you haven't noticed already, the two Stantons have very high compliance and like to be mounted on low-mass or light-ish viscous-damped arms. I think that Pickering's own arm matching recommendations for the 3000 was suspect. For example, they said that it was OK to use it in a Lenco L75. Not.

[flavio81]

The Pickering XSV3000 and Stanton 881S bodies differ in their coil windings.  Different DC resistance, different inductance.  Each was designed to work with its own body so that the physical characteristics of the stylus and the electrical characteristics of the body along with the specified resistive and capacitive loading, complement each other for correct high frequency response.  

This is true but the resulting frequency response mismatch, would not be extreme, imho. An advanced stylus with an advanced low-mass, short and stiff cantilever, has resonance frequencies near outside of the audio band. Which i assume would be the case with the best Stanton styli. A stylus with titanium or boron cantilever has resonances totally outside the audio band, if properly designed.

I think it's more a case of the moving magnet position (once inside the cartridge), and it's strength. I wouldn't be surprised if the low-impedance Stanton cartridges had magnets of very different strength, and/or in another position (position along the axis that is tangential to the groove).

And yes, if the magnet position is incorrectly shifted (which would be the case if there was a needle-cartridge mismatch), all sorts of problems would appear.

[GP49]

I think it's more a case of the moving magnet position (once inside the cartridge), and it's strength. I wouldn't be surprised if the low-impedance Stanton cartridges had magnets of very different strength, and/or in another position (position along the axis that is tangential to the groove).

And yes, if the magnet position is incorrectly shifted (which would be the case if there was a needle-cartridge mismatch), all sorts of problems would appear.

Stanton's replacement styli for the 980/981HZS and 980/981LZS were the same regardless of high or low impedance: the D98S.  Since these are moving-magnet cartridges, that puts the magnets in the same position in both bodies.

[richard]

I want to mention that there are more ways to obtian stiffness and lightness in a cantilever than using this or that material for it. Stanton rarely made their cantilevers simple aluminim tubes, although Gene has written of one case where they are. I've seen "semi-coned" shapes and bends. And I believe that there also was plating (constraining resonance). The company being extremely tight-lipped, didn't talk about this stuff, but a tour through their patents may be revealing. Unfortunately, what we still wouldn't know after exploring the patents is which styli used which concepts, and in which combinations. And, unfortunately, there were some cases in which Stanton made changes to bodies as well as styli.

As an example of this, Gene has a certain Pickering stylus, and I recall that he's got more than one of them. Most unusual, their cantilvers have straight tubes. I have three of the identical stylus number, and mine all have contoured tubes. I believe that we have also discovered that this stylus had three different tip sizes over its lifetime. This was not a helter-skelter Empire-style mess: they progressed from one, to the next, to the next, in three generations over many years.

[MrRogers]

I might add, some of the cantilevers used 5 elements in the alloy. It was truly space age material.

ps: Thanks Richard for the ephemera, otherwise I would never have known.

[richard]

Mr. Rogers wrote,

I might add, some of the cantilevers used 5 elements in the alloy. It was truly space age material.

ps: Thanks Richard for the ephemera, otherwise I would never have known.

Hmmm. Do I know you?
I keep finding things that I've forgotten. Like, did Stanton call the 5-element allow "Pentamet?" I've probably got this someplace in my file cabinet.

[MrRogers]

Maybe.

Think of Kangaroos, Koalas and The Sydney Opera House and you just might!

Mr. Rogers wrote,
Hmmm. Do I know you?

[flavio81]

Unfortunately, what we still wouldn't know after exploring the patents is which styli used which concepts, and in which combinations. And, unfortunately, there were some cases in which Stanton made changes to bodies as well as styli.

You are right richard. They have a patent on an aluminium oxide-covered cantilever making method which enables them to set the cantilever thickness in the precise, desired value. Maybe they have other ones on cantilevers, i haven't searched yet.

Certainly they don't look as standard Al cantilevers!!

[flavio81]

I might add, some of the cantilevers used 5 elements in the alloy. It was truly space age material.

ps: Thanks Richard for the ephemera, otherwise I would never have known.

As you both mentioned, it's "Pentamet". Here are the only references i've found so far:

I didn't know this cartridge existed!
http://www.kabusa.com/dm2ae.htm
"Features Nude Elliptical contact diamond stylus , ultra low mass pentamet™ cantilever"

And here:

http://www.gramophone.net/Issue/Page/February%201985/89/795109/THREE+T4P+CARTRIDGES+IN+REVIEW#header-logo
"The diamond stylus has Pickering's Stereohedron line-contact contour and the cantilever uses Pentamet, an alloy with a high rigidityto-mass ratio. It is a conductor and the designers claim to have achieved a direct earth connection from stylus to the cartridge earth pins, with a helpful (and silent) discharge of static charges from the record."

I will test my D89 AL stylus to see if it has such an earth connection!

By the way, Richard, do you have an idea on what does the "AL" suffix means on their styli and cartridges?