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RE: Short Life For ART7? (longish rant)

Posted by John Elison (A) on November 25, 2016 at 20:31:28

In Reply to: Short Life For ART7? (longish rant) posted by Meatface on November 25, 2016 at 12:29:20:

I bought two ART7 cartridges several months ago. Both were purchased brand new on eBay from different sellers. I measured the arm/cartridge resonance in my 10.5-gram SME V tonearm using Shure's Audio Obstacle Course test record, which has accurate resonance frequency test tracks and both of my ART7 cartridges measured between 6-Hz and 7-Hz. They are supposed to be medium-compliance cartridges, but both are actually high-compliance cartridges according to those measurements. As a result of this, they produce excessive subwoofer pumping in comparison to my Denon DL-S1 cartridge, which measures between 9-Hz and 10-Hz in my 12-gram Technics SL-1200 tonearm. I get very little subwoofer pumping with my DL-S1, but I must use my subwoofer's rumble filter with my ART7 because it pumps so much. This results in elevated levels of intermodulation distortion.

Perhaps this is the problem with your ART7. Can you measure your arm/cartridge resonance frequency using an appropriate test record? Do you notice any wobble or instability of the cartridge when playing records?

My ART7 still sounds good even though I know it must be producing higher levels of intermodulation distortion. It apparently has enough cantilever damping to prevent mistracking and my SME V has silicone fluid damping of lateral tonearm movement, which undoubtedly helps in this regard, too. However, my ART7's low resonance frequency in conjunction with excessive subwoofer pumping indicates it is not well matched to medium mass tonearms.

The ART7 is supposed to have dynamic compliance of 10 x 10 ^-6 cm/dyne whereas the ART9 is specified at 18 x 10 ^-6 cm/dyne. I believe that my ART7 cartridges were built with ART9 cantilever suspension systems. I don't know if this is a mistake or whether Audio Technica decided to change the ART7 to match the ART9. However, I do know that one inmate who bought his ART7 before Audio Technica introduced the ART9 has a medium-compliance ART7. I really wish that mine were medium compliance, too. Oh, well. Such is life!

Best regards,
John Elison

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