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Cartridge-Arm incompatibility: Cadenza Bronze-Wilson-Benesch ACT 1

T

theig

Active Member
A well worn topic I know but I wondered if anyone else had had trouble getting an Ortofon Cadenza Bronze to track in a W-B ACT 1 or other unipivot. (I know W-B don't call the ACT 1 a unipivot but functionally that's essentially what it is.)
I've spent the weekend trying to get my new Bronze to work in my Wilson-Benesch ACT 1 arm and have given up - it won't.

As a last resort I mounted an RB300 on my Orbe and tried the Cadenza in that - it tracks, not brilliantly but useably - it tracks the 1st two bias setting tracks on side 1 of the HiFi news test record and the tracking test track on side 2 - which it couldn't manage at all in the Wilson-Benesch.

On music, it's the same story, in the W-B the Cadenza can't cope with climaxes, e.g. at the end of sides 1 and 2 on the Decca Rossini William Tell-Pavarotti recording, in the RB300 it manages the Rossini and, as a further test the Guilini Verdi Requiem on DG, a recording I didn't dare attempt with the Cadenza in the ACT 1.

So I guess my questions are - Has anyone had any success getting the Cadenza Bronze to work in a unipivot? And if you did, what's the secret?
 
Thetes nothing unusual about the Bronze. Worth checking the specs on the wb arm to see what cart weights it likes, many of the wb carts are lightweights. Might just be a weight/effective lass mismatch. Stick a penny on the headshell and adjust tracking weight to adjust effective mass.

Worth mentioning that the kinematic bearing has quite a bit more stiction than a typical unipivot, at least 3x as much in fact.
 
Thanks for the thought - I tried the penny trick, no joy.

The effective mass of the RB300 is 11.5 g and takes cartridge weights 4 to 11g
The W-B ACT1 specs are hard to find but the ACT 2 has an effective mass of 9g and takes cartridge weights of 5 to 16 g.

The Cadenza weighs 10.7 g and has a compliance of 12 um/mN
The WB Ply weighs 6 g and has a compliance 15 um/mN

The calculated arm resonance of the Cadenza in the WB is 10.22 Hz, in the RB300 is 9.64 Hz using th mh-audio calculator

The calculated tonearm resonance of the Ply is 10.4 Hz in the WB arm
All assuming the ACT1 and 2 have close specs.

So if anything, the WB arm should suit the Cadenza better than the RB300, or am I missing something?
 
The Ortofons track well but need setting up well to be at their best.

I don't think you have them set up right.
 
Alignment checked against three protractors
Azimuth using a mirror
Tracking force using a digital jeweller's balance
Arm levelled by eye and measured
Anti-skate set using the HiFi News test record

No-one's perfect but I did my best - and got it close enough to right in the RB300 at the first attempt.

It's good to hear that you got yours set up and working.
 
Can’t help very much I’m afraid, I have the Bronze and a 1200G and GR (Res=9.7) and Gyro/PU7 (Res=9.9)

I’ve had no problems in over a year playing any LPs.

HiFi World reviewed it and commented that it wasn’t the best Ortofon for tracking but more than good enough at 300Hz on the test LP. I had no probs setting it up, I know it has a specific SRA, Ortofon state that you should go for a level parallel arm and then use VTA, aiming for it to slightly point back at the tonearm base with the correct VTF/Bias.
​
Have you considered it may be faulty, assume it’s brand new to you?


http://www.hi-fiworld.co.uk/vinyl-lp/25-cartridges/86-ortofon-cadenza-blue-a-bronze-mc.html

BRONZE

Tracking force 2.5gms
Weight 10.4gms
Vertical tracking angle 31degrees
Frequency response 25Hz - 20kHz
Channel separation 29dB

Tracking ability (300Hz)
lateral 65µm
vertical 45µm
lateral (1kHz) 20cms/sec.
Distortion (45µm)
lateral 2.8%
vertical 6%
Output (5cms/sec rms) 0.57mV

​
 
Oh it took me ages.

Should work in the RB300. You can buy a heavier weight but should be ok with the standard.

The most important bit is the tip to pivot distance. The rest just falls in to place.
 
Bairnstorm said:
Oh it took me ages.

Should work in the RB300. You can buy a heavier weight but should be ok with the standard.

The most important bit is the tip to pivot distance. The rest just falls in to place.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the encouragement, it's good to hear yours is working.

I'm pretty sure I've got the alignment and azimuth spot on - I'll try to upload images. The alignment shot has a shadow of the cantilever that obscures the alignment line behind the cantilever but you can follow the line from the front - the cantileber is aligned as perfectly as I can get it. Similarly the reflection in the mirror confirms to my eye that azimuth is set correctly but please let me know if you see it differently. Which only leaves VTA which I'll play with this week.

Amber Audio said:
Have you considered it may be faulty, assume it’s brand new to you?
Click to expand...

It came in a factory sealed box direct from Henley Designs (well with a one day detour via one of their dealers). I would hope on an item such as this Ortofon check all is in order before it laves the factory, so unless the courier used the package to play football, I'd hope it's in tip top conditon.

Do these cartridges need a few hours on them to break in the suspension before they track properly - I guess I'll find out over thenext few weeks.

3we1Yr
https://www.flickr.com/photos/194862697@N05/shares/653riG
LS56aT
https://www.flickr.com/photos/194862697@N05/shares/LS56aT
 
Amber Audio said:
Mine was brand new factory fresh and has been spot on since day 1. Can you get the dealer to have a look?
Click to expand...

I did email them but they're an hour and half away - that's basically most of a day of their time to come and have look. I can understand a reluctance on their part.

I had a quick play with VTA - I managed to make tracking worse but not any better

Thanks for sorting out the photos for me
 
Maybe there’s a pfm member nearby who could have a look if you post your location.

It’s an expensive cart so I’d expect the dealer to help you.

What alignment protractor are you using?
 
Try downloading the Hoffman protractor. That is the one I use now. You have to input all the data but it is very accurate once you do. Measure the spindle to pivot distance as sometimes arms are out by a mm and for this type of cartridge it makes a difference.

I do get tetchy if the sound pulls to one side which is why it took me ages to get right. Do check channel imbalance on your amp and speaker placement as that can cause a similar problem.

They need a bit of run in. Mine sounded great then rubbish (lack of bass, rough) and stabilised after about 50 hours.
 
Thanks to all for helpful suggestions, apologies for the delay in reply, I've been busy at work so have only had a couple of evenings to fiddle with things and to listen to the Bronze.

I've been using two alignment protractors, a combined single point/two point protactor from turntable basics and the card protractor that comes with the HiFi News test record. The turntable basics is a mirror for setting azimuth. This has three separate protactors on it, I've used the single and two point points. Using the single point protactors I have tried both eyballing the spindle and a thread to align the protractor. I end up with the same cartridge alignment - as per photo above whichever method I use. I suppose it's possible all these protractors are faulty but it seems unlikely. I spent an evening playing with VTA and came to conclusion that this is not the issue - I tried =/- .5 cm, the most the Michell VTA adapter for the RB300 can manage on the Orbe, in roughly 1 mm steps.

I started to worry that I was hearing things that weren't there or that the test records I was using were at fault so I set up the following three systems:

1. Michell Orbe SE - RB300 - Cadenza Bronze
2. Thorens TD160- SME 3009 Series 2 detachable head shell version - Stanton 881S. The Stanton has been safely in the drawer for the best part of the last 40 years since I started my MC adventure. I started with a lowly Ortofon MC10 Super mk 1 before moving on to an MC20II, MC30II, Transfiguration Spirit III then Rohmann. The last died of old age, the cantilever sheared at the diamond mounting point.
3. A homebrew turntable using the platter and bearing rescued from a defunct 401. (Sacrilege I know but the rest of the useable bits went to a good home and are now part of some other proud owner's system). The spindle runs on a PTFE bottom bearing. This cured the rumble which was dire before - it still had the original brass domed bearing, except the dome had worn away to a flat when I got it. The motor is an Audio Origami thing based on a 3.5" floppy disc driving a belt round the platter rim. (Wow is surprising not a major problem). The arm is also homebrew, a unipivot using a tapered carbon fibre tube sourced from an F1 supplier whose name I forget. The bearing cup is TiAl6V4. The cartridge is my venerable Transfiguration Spirit III.

In case anyone's interested, the amplification is a Sugden Masterclass phono stage into a Meridian G91A, thence to Sugden Symetra power amps and finally QUAD ESL 63s. All are secondhand purchases acrued over many years.

The test records used were the HiFi News test record - a new copy bought specifically to help set up the Bronze and the Decca Pavarotti Rossini William Tell (2 copies). A few tests were also conducted with the DG Guilini Verdi Requiem however this simply mirrored the results of the HiFi News and Rossini discs so I didn't spend a lot of time listening to it.

All 3 systems produced an enjoyable sound in their different ways.

The Cadenza clearly extracts more information from the groove while within its operating tracking window. Everything is sweet and clearly defined with lots of air and space around individual voices. I'm sure I'm hearing things in the mix I didn't hear before. Using the HiFi News test record, it tracks the 1st torture track on side 1 securely, with a lot of fiddling it just about, more or less manages the 2nd track and gives up on the 3rd. So better than in the Wilson-Benesch but not great.

It'll come as no surprise that the moving magnet Stanton is not as sweet sounding nor has as much space and air around the voices as the Cadenza but is still an enjoyable listen. It's also no surprise that it sails through torture tracks 1, 2 and 3 and will even have a stab at the last torture track. It tracks nearly every climax in the Rossini. This is really why the Stanton was included, the mistracking I'm hearing with the Bronze is not groove damage or a faulty pressing.

The biggest surprise of all was the 3rd system. I think we'd all agree that this has no right to be even mentioned in the company of the Orbe/Cadenza Bronze and yet it held it's own with ease, I found myself listening to a whole side of the Rossini, not just a couple of climaxes to test the tracking ability, then turning the record over to continue enjoying the performance. Although it didn't have the absolute clarity of the Bronze system, it was not far off. The beguiling Transfiguration openess and sweetness were all there, and it tracked better than the Cadenza/RB300. It managed torture track 2 and was prepared to have a go at track 3. It tracked all but the most dense climaxes of the Rossini. Having started the tests with the Cadenza, with the Transfiguration I found myself, as climaxes approached, preparing myself mentally for mistracking that never came.

Where does this leave me? Well, I had a brief moment where I said to myself, "If I'd realized the Transfiguraation was this good in this arm I could have saved myself a fortune". Then I thought, but a gimball bearing RB300 is so much easier to use and the Bronze does have a magical sound (until it doesn't). So perhaps I'll cut out the opera for a bit (or stick to theTransfiguration system for that) and enjoy the deftness of touch of the Bronze with instrumental music in the hope that after the Bronze has run in for a bit the problems iron themselves out.

Once again many thanks to those who have suggested possible cures and for letting me know that the Bronze can be made to track.
 
The weather has been quite cold. Have you tried positioning an articulate lamp with a low power tungsten bulb over the cartridge to warm it up? Sometimes that can have a beneficial effect on a cartridge suspension.
 
I find this outcome very puzzling, I've used a Cadenza Black on a Pro-ject Evolution carbon tonearm for some years, and if there was one characteristic I'd note before all others, it's how well it tracks. I have some warped, battered LPs that really should be binned, yet it plays them astonishingly well, as it does with all manner of badly-pressed and downright monstrous recordings. Not very helpful I know...

I found it mildly insensitive to tracking weight, same with Azimuth - near is fine, but VTA does matter, a lot - and the right setting doesn't really look right - the underside of the cart looks slightly slightly nose-down. I ended-up setting it by ear. Have to say, even set-up badly, it still tracked fine...

Burn-in affected SQ but not tracking so far as I noticed.

I can see no reason why the Bronze would track very differently, indeed, it's specifically designed to make the very best of suboptimal recordings and not over-expose their faults.

Can you try it on your other decks that are yielding satisfactory results? If it's NFG on those, I'd guess a rare faulty unit's escaped into the wild.
 
I've printed out a Hoffmann alignment gauge - this confirmed the alignment is correct. The RB300 and the W-B arms are in purpose made armboards from Michell so I'm also confident the arm is/was mounted correctly to the Orbe.

Thanks for the pointer on VTA. I tried running level then raising the arm so it was about 1 mm high where the arm passes over the edge of the disc vs the back of the headshell. I then raised the arm as high as possible using the Michell adapter. With the back of the arm at its highest, tracking improved a bit but it's still not great - just about manages torture track two. It almost tracks Pavarotti at the end of side 7 of the Rossini. I then inserted about 1.5-2 mm of cork mat to reduce the uplift, if you see what I mean. That definitely made tracking worse, it can't track Pavarotti at all.

I tried the Bronze in (3) above but it's too heavy for the arm counterweight. In any case, I can't believe anyone really believes the result I got with the Transfiguration and I'm sure Ortofon would not take such a system seriously.

Since I'd run out of adjustment on the RB300 I put the W-B back in, printed off a Hoffmann alignment gauge and plugged the Bronze into the W-B. I started with what I thought was a ridiculously high lift at the back of the arm and guess what, it tracked the 2nd toture track easily - nice clean 300 Hz tone on both channels. It still wouldn't look at track 3 though, so I spent the rest of the morning and half the afternoon lowering the arm about 0.5 mm at a time. This didn't seem to make a lot of difference to the tracking; I conclude that the dire tracking I got before in the W-B was most likely a combination of slight misalignment - cured by using a Hoffmann tracking gauge - and too low a VTA.

The Bronze now tracks the Rossini better than before but still not quite as well as the Transfiguration - or perhaps I've worn out the record with all the tooing and froing and the extra clarity the Bronze provides is showing this up. On the plus side, the Bronze has much greater clarity than the Transfiguration and is now useable.

So that's the best I can do - I'll report back to dealer and see what he says.

Many thanks to everyone for their helpful suggestions which have yielded positive results.
 
Given the amount of effort you’ve gone to to get things right and are still struggling, I’d give Henley a ring themselves. If you bought it directly from them, they’re responsible for aftercare. Plus they’re good eggs and won’t want a prestige product out there underperforming.
 
Well folks, it's been a long time so I thought it might be time for an update on how the story of the Cadenza bronze is progressing.

Eventually the dealer got involved and the cartridge went back to Ortofon. They replaced it without comment, so I have no idea what if anything was found to be wrong with it. So good service from that point of view. Unfortunately, out of the box, the replacement was worse than the original. I agreed to give it few weeks to run in before passing judgement; to cut a long story short, it hasn't got any better.

I've been through VTA, VTF, azimuth, stylus rake/arm height, bias I don't know how many times and countless records. Rake makes a difference - if it's widely out from level, tracking is worse but between level and +1 mm at the arm pillar it's fairly insensitive to rake; bias if set really high will get the cartridge to mistrack equally on both channels - I added 70% to the bias weight.

I modified my unipivot to accept the weight of the Cadenza, it may have tracked slightly better in the unipivot but not by enough to get it anywhere close to Ortofon's claimed spec of 80 um, it manages the 1st bias setting track with minor crackle (this is rumoured to be 60 um), crackles on the second track and gives up completely on the 3rd track and on the tracks on side 2 (rumoured to be 70 um).

So is there anything good about the Cadenza Bronze? It has very high clarity, almost CD like, so it's good for chamber music - inner voices can be heard clearly. It's also enjoyable on orchestral music.

But - it can't handle classical voices - I've even heard it "pop" playing a disc of Fischer-Dieskau singing leider. Ask it to track operatic climaxes and it's completely unacceptable. I did try it on my daughter's record of Madness's greatest hits (my excuse for buying it for her is she was the female lead in the school production) - this tracks but isn't what I'd call a challenging pressing. I don't have any access to "pop" female vocals.

So where does this leave me? Somewhere I never imagined I would ever be: I have one setup for opera/voice - Transfiguration in the unipivot - and one for everything else - the Cadenza/W-B. I feel a right pr*t running two turntables but this is what the Cadenza has reduced me to.

I clearly bought the wrong cartridge - or Ortofon have major QC issues, one bad one released to the wild is unfortunate, to replace it with one that performs worse is careless. Would I recommend a Cadenza Bronze to anyone? Well all I can say is it's the most disappointing cartridge I've ever bought, actually it's probably the most disappointing piece of hifi I've bought.
 
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