Is this Turntable Considered STATE OF THE ART?

[sterling shoote]

SAS stylus are either Boron, Sappire or Ruby Cantilevers... not aluminium.

They are good. Not as good as the original, but very good.

My experience with SAS-B on a Shure V15V-MR and V15 Type III suggests marginally better performance than from Shure Stylus I still run on a V15V-MR. The most life-like is SAS-B on my V15 Type III.

 

[dlaloum]

My experience with SAS-B on a Shure V15V-MR and V15 Type III suggests marginally better performance than from Shure Stylus I still run on a V15V-MR. The most life-like is SAS-B on my V15 Type III.

My measurements, show the original to have a cantilever resonance up around 32kHz, the 2 SAS styli I have (both of the Boron persuasion) have resonance at 14kHz and 16kHz respectively.... (which indicates substantially lower effective mass of the original!)

This makes the original fairly easy to tune for a flat frequency response - but the SAS is much more difficult - you need to custom load it - and you have to trade off flatness of F/R in the 8kHz to 14kHz range, vs flatness in the 12kHz to 20khz range - you cannot have both.

Personally I would aim for the flatter response in the lower 8k to 14k range, and accept the wider variation from perfect in the less critical top end.

It does track very well, and it sounds excellent.

I believe the Ruby/Sapphire cantilevers may be constructed a little differently - so their behaviour could be quite different - I have not seen them measured.

 

[sterling shoote]

My measurements, show the original to have a cantilever resonance up around 32kHz, the 2 SAS styli I have (both of the Boron persuasion) have resonance at 14kHz and 16kHz respectively.... (which indicates substantially lower effective mass of the original!)

This makes the original fairly easy to tune for a flat frequency response - but the SAS is much more difficult - you need to custom load it - and you have to trade off flatness of F/R in the 8kHz to 14kHz range, vs flatness in the 12kHz to 20khz range - you cannot have both.

Personally I would aim for the flatter response in the lower 8k to 14k range, and accept the wider variation from perfect in the less critical top end.

It does track very well, and it sounds excellent.

I believe the Ruby/Sapphire cantilevers may be constructed a little differently - so their behaviour could be quite different - I have not seen them measured.

It has been awhile since I measured cart resonance but even my AT MC Cart in AT Headshell at about 6.5 Hz is not at all problematic as might be expected. Fact remains my SAS-B loaded into Shure V15 Type III delivers most life-like presentation of recorded music I have known and thus I am done with cart shopping but I may fit my Shure 97xE with an SAS if I get back into vinyl. These days I am spending on 5.1 and stereo SACDs since pops and ticks from recently purchased new vinyl has been too much of a distraction to be satisfied with vinyl play.

 

[dlaloum]

It has been awhile since I measured cart resonance but even my AT MC Cart in AT Headshell at about 6.5 Hz is not at all problematic as might be expected. Fact remains my SAS-B loaded into Shure V15 Type III delivers most life-like presentation of recorded music I have known and thus I am done with cart shopping but I may fit my Shure 97xE with an SAS if I get back into vinyl. These days I am spending on 5.1 and stereo SACDs since pops and ticks from recently purchased new vinyl has been too much of a distraction to be satisfied with vinyl play.

My gut (based on measureing and tuning many cartridges, and a couple of SAS based cartridges), says the V15III with SAS will do better than the V15V - and quite similar to the M97.
The M97 and V15III are high inductance (500 to 600mH) where the V15V are low inductance (300mH) - and the SAS-B's that I have, are easier to load match/EQ with high inductance generators... (the settings end up closer to the current defaults of 47k & 400pf)