Turntables, Arms & Cartridges

While the exact formulation of the ‘IF adhesive’ chosen by Analog Relax to securely bond its stylus to the cantilever is unclear, the brand says it’s mixed with diamond dust ‘to fill the space between the stylus tip and the cantilever hole’. Our macro photograph clearly shows a circular shank, with elliptical-profile tip, mounted into the end of a crimped alloy cantilever. This is a very cost-effective solution, though we’ve seen similar used on premium pick-ups including Vertere’s Sabre [HFN Feb ’22] and the AVID Ionic [HFN May ’22]. In practice, a square shank, mounted into a laser cut hole, will typically offer a more secure connection between the stylus and cantilever while also permitting a more precise alignment of the elliptical ‘cut’ on the sides of a spherical tip.

The stylus fixing is evidently very neat here with no excess glue that might otherwise add to the tip mass but, however secure the fixing, it’s the HF bending modes of the alloy cantilever that ultimately define the transcription accuracy between groove and moving-coils. Cartridge artisans understand that these modes typically result in a sharp dip in output between 10-15kHz and are able to ‘tune’ and extend the final response by careful choice of cantilever tube length, wall thickness, moving mass, fulcrum compliance and damping. That’s exactly what we witness in the EX300 [see PM's Lab Report] – craftsmanship that contributes to the price. PM