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Gimme Shelter or who has the Crown Jewels?

Posted by garth on May 17, 2001 at 07:33:00

Following up on the Shelter/Crown Jewel "What's my Line?" thread I managed to get a new Crown Jewel (CJ) Special Edition to compare with a Shelter 501 and 901 I recently received.

After close microscopic inspection of a new Crown Jewel "SE" and the Shelter, Inc. 501 and 901 cartridges it is quite obvious the Crown Jewel (CJ) is the Shelter 501. I initially thought after a causal glance that the CJ was the 901 but upon closer inspection there is no doubt it is the 501. There is one minor difference between the CJ and 501 that being the mounting ears on the CJ are drilled and tapped for 2.5mm screws whereby the 501 has open slots requiring nuts and bolts for mounting. This is why I initially thought the CJ was the 901 not the 501 but it is quite obvious the manufacturer of both has simply machined off the drilled and tapped holes creating a minor visual difference between the two. All other dimensions of the body are the same and the generator/cantilever/stylus assemblies appear to be identical. Even the packaging is identical.

Listening comparisons reveal no differences and both cartridges track extremely well on various test records.

In the spite of the similarities to the other two the 901 has a much more powerful energetic and yet more natural sound. Switching between the CJ and 901 using two Graham ceramic armwands instantly reveals the increased "presence" of the 901 including more overall detail, a stronger bass foundation and a more realistic soundstage.

The CJ and 501 are great cartridges but the 901 is even better in all regards.

Phono amplification was done with a Klyne 7PX3.5 set for 67dB gain and 6PE3.5 set for 35dB gain in conjunction with the Shelter 411 matching transformer. I slightly preferred the direct use without the transformer but the 411 is a very transparent transformer and I wouldn´t hesitate using it with a phono preamp that did not have
sufficient gain for the cartridges. All three cartridges have outputs between 0.28mV and 0.35mV @ 3.54cm/sec.

How the current CJ and 501 compare to the older silver bodied CJ tested in TAS and Stereophile I can't say but since the current CJ is not the same it doesn't make much difference.

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Schiit Audio

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