[Closed] Would you spend £149 on a turntable stylus?

Your stylus (and cartridge) will probably make the most difference of anything you could upgrade as long as you have a reasonable amp and speakers already and the speakers are on stands and placed well in the room, not on the same surface as your table and your amp is also not on the same surface as the table. Your amp and speakers do not have to be expensive to be reasonable btw.

If you can afford £149 fairly easily, music means a lot to you and your records are not heavily worn I'd go for it.

No, but I don't have any records.

Even when I was into records back in the 80'/90's, £149 wasn't a particular expensive one even then.
I worked with a guy that constructed a concrete plinth in his basement, down to bedrock to sit his turntable on...

If you do, make sure you ask for a needle for your record player.
Hifi shop people like that sort of thing.

Gramophone, surely.

And then tell them you think playing Neil Young's "The Needle and the Damage Done" reminded you to get it changed.

Yes....ortofon concord

"that much better" is a bit hard to define, it will be more able to accurately track the groove, no doubt.

but how much you get out of it over say a AT95E will depend hugely on achieving the best setup of mounting tracking angle weight etc, as you probably know that cam make a huge difference.

for me and my fading hearing and the state of most of my collection it would not be worth it

Yes, and the rest. It's like prioritising decent tyres for your car. Not that I do that. Part-worns as I've spent all my money on styli 🙂

Currently running an AT VM95E with RigB.

£149 isn't much, if the decks ok.

Have an LP12 with Ittok LVII and an elderly K9, and been thinking of a new paratrace.

There's an LP12 group on FB and they have in the "files" section, a bit of a duffers guide to new styli on K9/K18 bodies. A lot cheaper than a very indifferent Adikt.

Err... the wife is sat next to me. No comment...

Er, yes....
Denon DL110 on a Rega 3.

I wouldn’t worry too much about the profile, just pick the one that sounds best to you.
Go somewhere like Wilkinsons that will demo some for you.

I took Mrs S with me and she agreed that the Denon was streets ahead of anything else at the price.

What turntable are you using?

I think they refer to it as diminishing returns
See also mugs kidding themselves

If you do, make sure you ask for a needle for your record player.

Do you get woofers and tweeters with it?

Err… the wife is sat next to me. No comment…

A man after my own heart!

I think they refer to it as diminishing returns
See also mugs kidding themselves

🙂
Go and listen to a few.

Cartridges sound massively different, depending on manufacturer and price, just like speakers and amps.

I believe my views on vinyl are well documented and I'll not be That Guy here again but I'll just say this:

How old are you and how good are your ears? You likely lost any perceivable benefits from a £150 needle over something out of a sewing box a decade or two back. Hi-Fi was always the domain of the young (and today's young no longer care).

Sorry totally crass response. Apologies.

Denon DL110

Great little cartridge! Can you still get them, I've got one I bought at least ten years ago. Think it was only about £50 from memory.

Yes - if the rest of the system is up to it.

I noticed a big difference when I upgraded from an old Audio Technica cartridge to my lovely new red Ortofon one - so from £50 to £100.

TS

You likely lost any perceivable benefits from a £150 needle over something out of a sewing box a decade or two back.

Nonsense. 🙂

The differences between good and bad HiFi is obvious, no matter how old your ears are.

Do voices and well recorded acoustic instruments sound natural?

Can you hear extended, clearly defined bass notes?

Is the frequency response flattish or is part of the spectrum artificially exaggerated?

How much detail can you hear?

If your speakers are set up correctly each instrument should occupy it's own space within the soundstage, if the producer intended it to.
Some very, very expensive stuff doesn’t do this.

It's not rocket surgery, just the audio equivalent of evaluating the picture from a TV.
The same criteria apply - balance, detail, dynamic range and a natural presentation.

Great little cartridge! Can you still get them, I’ve got one I bought at least ten years ago. Think it was only about £50 from memory.

Yep, still available.
About £200 now but still an exceptional bit of kit.

I reckon you'd be better off spending £149 on some CDs, they'd sound a lot better.

yes you are likely to notice a difference when removing an old worn AT and fitting a new unworn one especially if it is a higher end model...

CD's sometimes dont sound that great but have the advantage that playback equipment is less fussy and you can encode LF signals that are nearly impossible to cut onto vinyl even at 45rpm 12", as well as perfect stereo separation.

BillMC - that is really very funny. Cheered me up! I LOVE CDs though - they are awesome esp. spun on my CD63 KI Signature.

I'm 53 and can hear a 12 kHz sine wave.

Rusty - it's an AT LP5x with a few mod's.

Pop round if you want to listen to the Denon.

Wilkinsons, just up the road in Nelson will demo cartridges for you.
Very decent people to do business with.

Nah, obviously wasn't being serious. My son is devoted to vinyl, I find CD clearer and sharper at my ancient age and cloth ears.

I like CD's, but if you've already got hundreds of vinyl albums it makes sense to get the most out of 'em.

Actually I would if that's what I liked. I'd happily spend more than I would on a car if I had to buy a new one. Music goes straight to the soul and scores lines in your brain.

Back when I had money to spend on hifi, and had a Saturday job working in a local hifi shop, which gave me a 33% staff discount, plus access to the second-hand kit the owner’s son acquired and then upgraded, I put together a turntable which comprised a Logic DM101 deck, Zeta tonearm, and an Audio Technica AT33 moving-coil cartridge. The last bit was a bit of luck; a rep had left it for a try-out, and never came back for it.

I’ve just done a search, and they’re still available - £439.99, actually a bit of a bargain, other AT MC cartridges are available for prices well above that…

I’ve still got all the kit I bought back then, that was the early 80’s, the turntable needs the speed controller fixed, a component has gone duff, and a new belt, plus my Aiwa cassette deck would need a thoroughly good clean and service. The Denon CD player will probably still play, and the Rotel RA820 preamp and Crimson poweramps would most likely be fine. I think the turntable/arm/cartridge was about £2500 retail back then.

https://www.turntableworld.co.uk/analogue-c49/cartridge-zone-c5/cartridges-mc-c15/at33ev-moving-coil-cartridge-p1072

Just bought a pro-ject deck with an ortofon red cartrige factory fitted for £275, similar to the cheaper rega but with a better cartridge as standard and you don't need to flip the platter to switch from 33 to 45.

Replaced a Stanton 250 direct drive with a basic stylus, Started recording in via USB and rhe results werent thaat great so was advised (by sound engineer) that a £100 cartridge will make all the difference and really important if ripping to digital.

Beyond £100 The differences are subjective, cold or warm etc so it depends what you listen to. For y mostly 12" dance stuff the ortofon red is fine, best for music that goes dramatically from quiet to loud.

Nonsense. 🙂

So prove it to me.

The differences between good and bad HiFi is obvious

It is. And the once-critical importance of a decent analogue source and quality interconnects was genocidally destroyed by lossless digital about 20 years ago.

if you’ve already got hundreds of vinyl albums it makes sense to get the most out of ’em.

As I recall, my dad had a for-its-time high end turntable and cassette deck which I'm is guessing of similar vintage to many of your "hundreds" of albums. It had controls for things like "wow" and "flutter," designed to compensate for the imperfections from analogue things what spun.

Hm. I might see if I can pinch it from my mum. Or at least, fire it up and see if it still works.

So prove it to me.

Can your tell the difference if you change the sound settings on your TV?
If so, you can tell the difference between different sounding HiFi components.

And the once-critical importance of a decent analogue source and quality interconnects was genocidally destroyed by lossless digital about 20 years ago.

If you play a CD or a vinyl record, only the source of the information changes.
All the other elements in the chain impart their own signature on the sound.

And all CD players do not sound the same.
Bring one round and we can compare a couple. 🙂

I agree that lossless digital is a technically superior source to vinyl btw, so no need to bring that particular straw man up again.

Are we talking stylus or cartridge here?

Can your tell the difference if you change the sound settings on your TV?

I think I can.

But can I?

If you play a CD or a vinyl record, only the source of the information changes.
All the other elements in the chain impart their own signature on the sound.

Sure. But the less that "elements" bugger about with it of their own volition / failing and the greater control passed to the listener the better, no?

And all CD players do not sound the same.

Yeah, I'm not sure as I can square this circle at 1am, but historically I've spent hours at Richer 'auditioning' CD players and I want to agree with you.

Bring one round and we can compare a couple. 🙂

I haven't owned a dedicated CD player since mine went bang years ago.

No - but I would spend £100 's of ££ on relatively meaningless 'upgrades' for my bike....

If you can afford it and it makes you happy 🤷‍♂️

I’d be surprised if changing the stylus made much difference. Are you unhappy with how your records sound now? If not I’d suggest buying more records than getting a new stylus.

£149 sounds fairly cheap in the world of HiFi which seems unbounded by the laws of physics and purple prose so why not unbounded by economics too?

Some folks have suggested changing the cartridge and stylus. That will make things sound a bit different. Probably a bit pricier than £149 but it gets you into the realm of MM vs MC, OFC or silver windings, and then the possibility to consider a new pre-amp.

I ditched LPs about 25 years ago. Had a couple of OK turntables but never played the records as I had CDs which were less fuss, sounded better, and didn’t have the wow, flutter, hiss, and pop of 80s and 90s vinyl.

I just bought a rega one with the Billy basic cartridge, I did think of an upgrade at the time but had no idea whether it was worth it. Tbh even now after 3 months I think I would have to demo a better one before I spent any cash.

For active speakers I added a subwoofer, about 200 quid which really is an upgrade, depends what music you listen to though.

Isnt it one of those things that, if you put them side by side and thought about it. Compare and contrast, you could pick out some subtle but definate differences or improvements.
But once its fitted, and youre elbow deep in Cannibal Corpse, you wont actually notice it.

Technically better, and thats fine if thats your thing. But meh, in the real world.

like improving your bike to scrub a few seconds off a descent that you ride on a daily bimble. Yes, tehcnially faster, but....

I suppose the other consideration here is, are you just playing Parts Darts?

If you asked me, "should I spend [amount] on 8GB of RAM for my PC?" I'd have questions. How much is installed already? What are you using the PC to do? What does the rest of the system look like? And of course, why are you even asking the question, are you having performance issues?(*)

Without looking at the bigger picture it's an impossible question. The answer to "should I spend [amount] on 8GB of RAM for my PC?" may well be yes. But a better question is "I have [amount] to spend on a PC upgrade, what should I buy?" to which the answer could well be "install an SSD drive."

Say for the sake of argument that a new stylus will bring some degree of improvement. Is that your best spend of £150?

(* - with the PC)

The **** quality of newly released vinyl is putting me off investing anything in my vinyl setup. Bought a 7" single , barrie by frankie, from Juno the other day and it's appalling. Sounds much better on Spotify blue toothed to a roberts radio.
I think we're being mugged.

Would I spend £149 on a stylus?

No, I'd put it toward a good CD player and some spangly headphones. As a fan of logic and reason and also an engineer, I can appreciate that CDs were engineered to surpass the human ears ability to discern detail.

You can make a CD sound like it's been played through one of them there record players if you want. It also amuses me that folk now find the need to install expensive digital cables and want 'super high bit rate audio', when, because physics and biology, CD is precisely as sufficient as you need for two perfectly independent channels.

Money spent on actual speakers is a country mile better spent than money spent on the electronics. Also, because room acoustics, headphones can be even better than either.

I find it quite hard to play records on a CD player though. They're too big to fit on the platter.
As a fan of logic and reason, like.

And because of room acoustics...
A few months ago I bought a big Yamaha streaming amplifier (r-n803d) which is an improvement on the little Yamaha streaming amplifier I had before. It's very good but I felt it was showing up the shortcomings of the Mordaunt Short speakers, which I'm reluctant to change until we move house and have enough room for some good floorstanders.
At the weekend, with a bit of time on my hands, I decided to take a look at the microphone that came with it which is supposed to set up the profile to match the acoustics of the room.
Flipping heck! It really works! Gone are my reservations about the speakers and the streaming quality. As long as I can resist fiddling with the bass and treble knobs the sound is brilliant.

I find it quite hard to play records on a CD player though. They’re too big to fit on the platter.
As a fan of logic and reason, like.

ho, ho, ho

If you can afford £149 fairly easily, music means a lot to you and your records are not heavily worn I’d go for it.

I would agree with this. I do have to admit spending £47 on a cartridge in 1982 for my Rega Planar 3 which according to an inflation calculator is roughly £170 today so perhaps I am not the most objective person to ask. At the time, when I had a much smaller disposable income than I do now, I felt was worth it

No doubt there's a law of diminishing returns with hifi (as there is with bikes). I've moved up from an AT95E through a variety of cartridges to a Lyra Helikon which, at the time, was their cheapest option. The more expensive I've gone, the less obvious the imperfections on the record and the more intricate the detail retrieved.

I posted this thread yesterday as I'm keen to hear other systems:

https://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/hifi-listening-to-other-systems/

Years ago I listened to a super expensive set up with a Nakamichi Dragon amongst other exotica. The owner loved the sound but I felt I was listening through a blanket - each to their own!

Well I blame Mr.S. I was more than happy with my CD player until she bought me a S/H Marantz auto TT for xmas 2020. Within two months I'd upgraded to an AT LP5x and an elliptical stylus. Then I splashed out on a RigB upgrade so my cartridge is secure in a machined aluminium housing.

Mugged? Not too sure. We do like buying stuff - it's in our DNA.

But I know, hand on brain, that the CD format is superior by a long way for multiple reasons:

Cost
Resilience
Footprint
Noise floor
Dynamic range
Freq. response
Compliance with Nyquist sampling theory with more than adequate bit depth for accurate quantization...

And the science behind the CD is mindblowing, especially given the time it was prototyping.

Think of computer or car technology in 1978!

Wanna buy a turntable?

EDIT: double post

CDs were a fine example of superb engineering. Absolutely.

but

Hifi isn't exactly sold on science, is it?

But I know, hand on brain, that the CD format is superior by a long way for multiple reasons:

Cost
Resilience

I have at least two CD's in the cupboard that will no longer play due to the discs degrading with an oxide bloom under the polycarbonate. The vinyl from even longer ago is still playing well. Neither music format are super versions of pressing (SACD or 200g vinyl).

Early CD players were really poor at reproduction too as corners were cut to maximise profits from the new format. A Linn Sondek of the period will still comfortably keep up with moderate CD players though it may be necessary to update bearings and stuff to get the best out of them today.

CD's at 16 bit/44.1k are not that great 24 bit 192k is a world apart.

analog recordings can sound superb, and a good pressing to vinyl often sounds nicer than a digitized versin, even though it goes through a whole mountain of of phase shifting eq etc.
digitized analog signals are robust, but there is some dark art in music and recording I feel..

at the end of the day its the music that moves you not the medium.

regarding CD's being able to store and replay the nuance of sound that humans are capable of discerning, no they are not.

a good pressing to vinyl often sounds nicer than a digitized versin

Define "nicer".

nicer as in pleasing to listen to, its very subjective.

Indeed. Your nice probably isn't mine. Which is why arguing about hi-fi is a waste of time.

About a year ago I spent around £900 on refurbing and servicing my 35 year old Linn Sondek LP12 turntable, which I've had from new, treating it to a new power supply, motor, bearing, belt and cartrige (about £200 for the cartridge) so yes I have spent well over £125 on a stylus. Money well spent I reckon because it sounds at least as good as a decent CD or streamer- of course with the occasional added surface noise. Good investment as well because the dealer reckoned that even in its knackered state the deck was worth around £1500 so now its probably one of the most valuable things in our house.

Your nice probably isn’t mine. Which is why arguing about hi-fi is a waste of time.

Oooh, now you've done it....🙂

'Nice' is subjective.
'High Fidelity' isn't.

If your HiFi doesn't look like this it ain't worth shit - bring back the stack! 🙂

[img] [/img]

slowoldman
Full Member

Indeed. Your nice probably isn’t mine. Which is why arguing about hi-fi is a waste of time.

Maybe..in fact you are almost certainly correct, it's more than quite probable...and who is having an argument here?

if you love music and have and interest in how a performance or idea can be captured crafted and distributed, discussing the playback may or may not be a waste of time depending on your personal perspective.

some people obsess others just like to subscribe to spotify, whatever dude.

Money well spent I reckon because it sounds at least as good as a decent CD or streamer- of course with the occasional added surface noise.

You spent £900 on repairing something that now sounds "at least as good" as a CD player only with extra noise?

I must've missed something here.

"I must’ve missed something here."

The fact that he has loads of vinyl records and likes to listen to them?

That’s a very cheap moving coil cartridge. I’d increase the budget.

I have at least two CD’s in the cupboard that will no longer play due to the discs degrading with an oxide bloom under the polycarbonate.

The problem is with the thin coat of lacquer that’s spayed onto the aluminium coating applied to the polycarbonate disc after its pressed; some manufacturers were using the wrong type of lacquer that degrades and allows the mirror coating to oxidise. Nimbus Records,,a classical label, we’re especially guilty of this, I’ve got a number of their recordings, and the lacquer on the non-label side is actually sticky! I also have discs I bought in the early 80’s which still play perfectly, including the very first CD I bought in 1982, Peter Gabriel 4, after I returned five vinyl copies because of the appalling quality of the pressings, which were unlistenable due to surface noise. And that was on the turntable I mentioned earlier.

Anyway, only two? What percentage of your total CD collection does that comprise? I’ve still got hundreds of CD’s, I think even the Nimbus ones will still play, and they’re all over twenty years old.

Bought a 7″ single , barrie by frankie, from Juno the other day and it’s appalling.

*sigh* It’s a 7” single, I can promise you that format never was, and never will be, the definition of high fidelity! It’s intended for jukeboxes and teenagers with a little portable record player on the floor with loads of 7”-ers scattered all over the place. You’ll get better results from a cassette.

Now, a 12” single, well mastered, will blow your socks off! It’s the format of choice for dub, funk, anything that requires a decent amount of dynamic range, you’ll never get bass on a vinyl album that comes close to a good 12” single.

A 7” single will have at most have a meagre 40/45 dB range no matter what expense is thrown at the turntable/system, a well mastered and cut 12” can have approx 65dB of dynamic range, a cd’s dynamic range is approx 96 dB.

re: "the stack" above.

The graphic equaliser. *Sigh* How much shit can you possibly introduce to the signal path?

Anyway - enjoy your music however you listen to it.

I'm having a vinyl morning. Queen through Du Lipa to China Crisis and it's ace.

I may spend that £149 when my elliptical becomes conical!

How old are you and how good are your ears? You likely lost any perceivable benefits from a £150 needle

Wrong and misses the point.

Even if you've lost some top, decent kit will make everything that you still can hear sound better, and feel better (which is the real point).

No kit exists to scientifically measure 'how you feel' so it's a concept many of the literal-minded denizens of Singletrack fail to grok when it comes to the philosophy of hi-fi.

I need a new needle as it goes; I won't be spending £149 on a replacement, no ...

How long do they last for?

No kit exists to scientifically measure ‘how you feel’ so it’s a concept many of the literal-minded denizens of Singletrack fail to grok when it comes to the philosophy of hi-fi.

er, yeah, no

hifi is sold in exactly the same way as fad diets or politicians or self improvement schemes, with voodoo and hand waving mysticism

you want to give
a travelling wizard
a celebrity dieter
a hifi shop

some money for
some totally magic beads
their zero effort yet more tasty than fast food weight loss diet
overpriced bits of electronics

then crack on

but, the totally magic beads are not actually totally magic at all, in much the same way the emperor's new clothes were not even there.

If you're talking it up as a 'philosophy' then, I think, you are too far down the hifi rabbit hole and will certainly not GAS about anything I, or any other literal-minded denizen of singletrack hath writ, unless it is to attack it.

Also, I have some totally magic beads to sell. They're totally magic. Would you like to buy them?

Lets wax lyrical about the 12" single.

My first encounter with one was Motorhead's 'Ace of Spades'. I had an old hmv portable record player and when I dropped the needle the sound that emmitted from it was like the sound of hell opening up.

Of course it was the sound of the tiny speaker distorting and the feeble amp being overdriven but it sounded 'Ace'. It was the first time music had sent a shiver up my spine. CD's might have more dynamic range and clarity but they don't do that.

What we listen to is an interface between lots of different elements, with our ears (and brain) being the last pieces in that chain. Music is about vibration, be that a string on a guitar, a vocal chord or a drum skin but also our eardrum's as we listen to it and bodies as we feel it.

It's can also be about how the needle vibrates in the groove. Whist we can see this is an imperfect scenario it is nevertheless in smpathy with the physical way in which the sound is played, recorded and listened to. Digital formats tend to iron that out by claiming to eliminate some of the physical elements in the chain thus geting closer to a perfect sound.

It was never about that, the quality we admire in so much of the music we listen to is a consequence of imperfect interfaces, the interplay between different technologies. It's the story of modern music. Deus ex machina.

Someone disagree with me so I can cite a few examples..

Yes @inkster you have a point about imperfections being "desirable". It's what makes a tube guitar amp turned up to 11 make your hair stand on end. My argument however would be that that stuff is for the live performance/recording session. If you actually want the hear what was recorded you don't want to add further distortion in your living room.

AT95 is one of those good ones, don't cost much, have to spend a lot more to noticeably better it. But depends on your tastes, some folk want bass, some folk want the high end. Anything is better than a worn out, distorted, smoke damaged manky thing thats decades old.

The more you spend generally the better they get, but with MM type there is a ceiling (about £3-500), then above that you need to go MC, but that requires a better pre-amp and better everything in between TBH.

No point putting a £1k carbon crankset on an apollo Y frame from 2001. Same in the audio world. It defo becomes snake oil at the high high end.
For a reasonable MM cart, spend £60-200, get a £4 protractor to make sure it sits in the right place, then never worry about it again until you mangle it when the cat smacks it.

I can't remember me dad using a protractor on his Ferguson music centre...

Someone disagree with me so I can cite a few examples..

Can you cite them for people who agree?

Has to be this: Hifi shop sketch

Well I just discovered that the current replacement for my cartridge would be around £260 so I suppose I have to say yes - though maybe not considering vinyl is no longer my main medium.

"Can you cite them for people who agree?"

Ok, when Bessie Smith was first recorded, her voice was so powerful that it overwhelmed the recording equipment, distorting wildly. The engineers realised that although they had failed to record her voice accurately, something new had been created that sounded great in a different way, deus ex machina. They became aware that the technology itself had a voice, or even a kind of soul.

I'm reminded of Keith Richards arguing with the recording engineers as they freaked out whenever the needle went into the red, for Keef, if it wasn't in the red it wasn't working.

I can't remember which album it was but Bruce Springsteen once demoed an album onto a 4 track cassette. Said tape fell out of his shirt pocket whilst fishing and ended up in a lake. Once retrieved the sound had been ruined...in a good way. So good in fact that after recording the material in the studio he ended up using the soggy cassette for the master recording.

Then there's boogie woogie. The term comes from 'bogey woogie', coined a hundred years ago, when jazz musicians playing on railway trains in Texas had to modify what they were playing to accommodate the noise coming from the bogeys (wheels) as they went over the joins in the tracks. Diddly dum, diddly dum....

A bit esoteric that last one but I think it shows how 20th century music was very much about the relationship between humans and technology, the desired aesthetics of the product being more than just the idea and intention of the musician and the search for perfection.

The room in which you are listening to music has a much, if not more influence on the sound than the equipment being used.

I inherited some Nad amps and lovely teak speakers. My 12" bass heavy records sounded dreadful in my living room so I continued using my Event 20/20's (clinical studio monitors). I sold them to a friend who put them in his warehouse studio space, where they sounded incredible, giving a warm sound in a 'cold' space. The colder sounding Events sounded better in my 'warm', carpeted living room.

I'm very much geared to the physical aspects of sound, having worked in a lot of nightclubs. I preferred overriding the top end of an average house system (a bit of nice distortion on snares and cymbals) and bringing in extra sub-bass to handle the bottom end. Never bothered too much with the mid-range in those environments as it occupies the same frequency as people talking and MC's chatting, so if you tried to bring out the mid range you ended up turning everything up to 11 and hurting people's eardrums, I prefered heavier rather than louder and was often disappointed by mega systems that others thought amazing.

Though those who listen to music on headphones can probably ignore everything I said. I'll also add that my ears are f*** from all the aforementioned activity.

Hi-Fi was always the domain of the young (and today’s young no longer care).

How come old men designed the best stuff?

Did they?

Along with the room, amp and speakers the stylus is without doubt the most important parts of a record player set up in terms of sound quality.

I have made many hifi related purchases over the years that have definitely improved sound quality, but along with amazing innovation and technological advancement there has always been a fair amount of marketing balderdash in the hifi sector . Generally speaking though to get the decent bits of kit you have needed to pay top dollar.

Not really related to the OP's original question but discussions on hifi equipment often bring to mind the (IMO) classic clip from the 80's film Ruthless people.