''Progressive All The Way''

To add even more costs to these already pricey machines, you’ll need professional cartridges and styluses
to complete them. To fully understand the function of cartridges and styli, let’s take a brief look at how
record players work.
A record groove can have high frequency analog musical signals pressed in the vinyl that are hundreds of
times smaller than the diameter of a piece of your hair. The “stylus,” also known as “the needle,” is the
jewel-tipped virtually microscopic head of a cartridge that physically comes into contact with those tiny
grooves. The stylus vibrates as it rubs against the tiny variations in those grooves producing the sound
that was recorded into those grooves. If you’re in a quiet room with your amplifier off, you can actually
hear a tinny sound coming from the stylus and cartridge as it progresses across the record. The cartridge
electromagnetically captures that signal and shoots it over wires to your preamp.
Back in the heyday of pressing records in the 1960s, the major record labels agreed on an industry
standard known as “The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) Curve.” Using this equalization
curve improved the signal-to-noise ratio of records by boosting the high frequencies cut on the record
while greatly extending the play-back time by reducing the low frequencies (the lows take up wider
groove spaces, dramatically decreasing the amount of music you could fit on a record). Another benefit
of removing lows with the RIAA Curve is that low frequencies caused distortion and occasionally made
needles skip off some records. All the record companies agreed to basically shave off the same exact
levels of bass frequencies less than 1 kHz so that all vinyl records are consistently cut with reduced bass
levels and increased treble levels. The RIAA inverse curve reverses the process, replacing the bass that
was removed and producing an accurate sound without all the inherent issues. This process requires a
different electronic input known as the “phono” inputs of mixers, preamps and amplifiers. This is why
you can’t plug a turntable into a CD line-level input—the bass frequencies won’t get replaced and it’ll
sound nasty. Since CDs don’t suffer from analog issues, there is no RIAA Curve applied to them.
Scratching a record across the grooves with a hard jewel (not the good kind of scratching, which follows
the grooves of the record) will permanently damage the record by cutting into the pre-pressed grooves
causing skips and nasty “pop” type sounds. Don’t worry—it takes a significant amount of force to slice
into those hard grooves. A brief slide across a record isn’t good for the record, but chances are it won’t
produce a noticeable scratch in most cases.
An important term to know when evaluating your cartridge purchasing decision is something called
“tracking force.” Tracking force is a measurement of the actual weight that keeps the stylus in place in
the record’s groove. The amount of tracking force is directly proportionate to record wear—the heavier
the force, the more it’ll eventually tear up the tiny nubs on the walls of the grooves in the record that
ultimately produce the sound. Consequently, the lower the tracking force, the lower the record wear, but
then you sacrifice “trackability” and introduce a propensity to skip.
Finally, there’s the “spherical” vs. “elliptical” battle, which basically describes the shape of the stylus.
A spherical stylus is more rounded, kind of like the bottom of a sphere, and has a better chance of
staying in the groove while scratching. For that benefit, you’ll sacrifice the aural accuracy of an elliptical
stylus, which is much more narrow and pointy so it’s more able to pick up the more subtle nubby
information in the grooves of the record. Typically, most scratchers go spherical, and beatmixers and
audiophiles choose elliptical.
You’ve got to decide what kind of DJ you want to be before you can make an educated decision on which
cartridges to purchase for your turntables, unless you’re bleeding money and want to purchase one of
each. In that case, send me a check too.
For scratching DJs, one of the most popular cartridge and needle packages is Shure’s $75 M44-7 (see Figure
4.2). The M44-7 was designed specifically for scratching and weighs in at 1.5 to 3 grams of tracking force
using its spherical shaped stylus. Although the M44-7 cartridge will wear out your records the quickest,
most scratchers love it because of its resistance to skipping out of the groove and ruining a perfectly
good baby scratch. Shure also makes the $60 SC35C, another all-purpose DJ cartridge with a whopping 4
to 5 grams of tracking force! Stanton’s $40 505 SK II is also a very good and well known spherical stylus
for DJs with a wide range of 2 to 5 grams of tracking force. It’s important to realize that most scratching
needles do not produce the full range of audible audio frequencies. Some of the higher treble frequencies
are sacrificed due to the non-skip mechanics of these needles and cartridges.
For mobile DJs and non-scratching club DJs, Stanton’s $60 full-range 680 EL II seems to be the king of
cartridges. My original 680 ELs have taken abuse from rampant dust bunnies to beer spatters, and ten
years later, they still sound sweet! Their elliptical stylus with 2 to 5 grams of tracking force isn’t
specifically optimized for scratching, but rather for better frequency response when playing normally.
Shure’s $65 M44-G is another great an all-purpose cartridge with 0.75 to 1.5 grams of tracking force.
Ortofon makes pricey alternative all-in-one sleek looking cartridge assemblies. Their $170 Concord
Nightclub S with its fluorescent yellow tip and spherical stylus is used by many club DJs. The Concord
Nightclub E version is essentially the same unit, except an elliptical stylus is used for a more full
frequency response. Ortofon fans feel the design of this cartridge avoids skipping while helping to
preserve the life of their records. Another bonus is that its stylus is easily visible while in the record
groove, so you’ll always know exactly where you are in the song (important for scratching) and how
soon you have until the break. Shure has released a competing design in this family called the “Shure
Whitelabel” cartridge.
Finally, some DJs insist on only purchasing cartridges in “matched pairs.” Many cartridges are sold in
sets of two. The theory is that if they’re produced together and sold together, chances are they’ll perform
in a similar manner. I’d guess that with modern production techniques, even if there were a difference in
production, the response from that difference would be so small it wouldn’t be noticeable.

they are from Diamond right?