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

theig said:
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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What a bloody shame. You deserve better. I'd take it back to the dealer and ask them to get it set up with one of their demo turntables. If the cartridge isn't radically improved its money back time. If its a lot better ask for their help getting it to work in your set up.
 
Darren said:
What a bloody shame. You deserve better. I'd take it back to the dealer and ask them to get it set up with one of their demo turntables. If the cartridge isn't radically improved its money back time. If its a lot better ask for their help getting it to work in your set up.
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It’s not like it’s an AT95, a Bronze is £1799 now. I agree with Darren that your dealer should have intervened more proactively, I’d have expected them to set the new cart up in their shop to test it before doing anything else and if they reckoned it was working properly get you to bring in some LPs you were having problems playing or even getting your TT to them so they can do proper tests with all their alignment gear and other carts/decks available to get to the bottom of things and hopefully sending you home with it all setup on your deck a happy Bronze owner.
 
Darren said:
What a bloody shame. You deserve better. I'd take it back to the dealer and ask them to get it set up with one of their demo turntables. If the cartridge isn't radically improved its money back time. If its a lot better ask for their help getting it to work in your set up.
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My post above is basically what I sent to the dealer two weeks ago - the response has been silence.
 
theig said:
My post above is basically what I sent to the dealer two weeks ago - the response has been silence.
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You are guilty. Guilty of being too patient.
They are obviously hoping you will go away. Have a look online regarding your rights. They are comprehensive nowadays. The route to small claims court is easy and they will want to settle well before then.
 
Put the cart in another arm then you can be sure it's not the cart, which it isn't, the cart's fine.

It's the combination of cart and arm. Namely, the cart weight isn't optimal for the arm, and it's a tall cart and that means you have to raise the arm to keep SRA sensible that that introduces less control in roll, which affects tracking, which on a kinematic 4 point bearing arm, with much higher stiction than a uni or gombal arm, results in bad tracking.

The cart is fine it's just the wrong cart for that arm. It's a poor arm bearing design, placing visual novelty over low stiction. Free balance the arm in open air so it hovers and try moving the headshell sideways by pressing obliquely with a 10x30mm strip of green Rizzla paper.

The original ACT1 deck was my unicorn TT- until I tested the wb arm.... sad day.
 
sq225917 said:
Put the cart in another arm then you can be sure it's not the cart, which it isn't, the cart's fine.

It's the combination of cart and arm. Namely, the cart weight isn't optimal for the arm, and it's a tall cart and that means you have to raise the arm to keep SRA sensible that that introduces less control in roll, which affects tracking, which on a kinematic 4 point bearing arm, with much higher stiction than a uni or gombal arm, results in bad tracking.

The cart is fine it's just the wrong cart for that arm. It's a poor arm bearing design, placing visual novelty over low stiction. Free balance the arm in open air so it hovers and try moving the headshell sideways by pressing obliquely with a 10x30mm strip of green Rizzla paper.

The original ACT1 deck was my unicorn TT- until I tested the wb arm.... sad day.
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I agree - notwithstanding Simon's comments about the WB arm's bearing design, the Ortofon Cadenza cartridges are all relatively low compliance designs that really do benefit from higher effective mass than the WB arm provides, which is lightweight by any standard. The Rega is still relatively lightweight too, so here I don't think that changes matters much. I have a NOS Kontrapunkt B here whose specs are very similar to the Cadenza Bronze's, and that comes to life with tonearms having 20g+ effective mass and it still sounds wonderful with a 30g Glanz arm, without exhibiting any LF instability - that might suggest that the true cartridge compliance is actually lower than Ortofon's specs state. A quick glance at the Vinyl Engine cartridge resonance calculator confirms that, for a 12cu cartridge like the Cadenza Bronze and Kontrapunkt B, the WB arm sits at the extreme lower end of a theoretically 'acceptable' effective mass range, when in truth it is best to aim for the middle of that range, or higher, within reason of course.
 
It's a less than ideal mix to be sure, compliance, induced roll and high stiction bearing.
 
Can the OP find anyone local or a dealer to try the Bronze in a higher mass tonearm? As I understand it from a brief skim of this thread, the WB arm is less than ideal for the reasons pointed out above, and presumably an RB300 allows no adjustment for VTA/SRA, which I would imagine makes it useless for a stylus like the replicant. So it's not yet been tried in a suitable arm.
 
Elephantears said:
Can the OP find anyone local or a dealer to try the Bronze in a higher mass tonearm? As I understand it from a brief skim of this thread, the WB arm is less than ideal for the reasons pointed out above, and presumably an RB300 allows no adjustment for VTA/SRA, which I would imagine makes it useless for a stylus like the replicant. So it's not yet been tried in a suitable arm.
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I’m not getting why they won’t work reasonably well together, could someone explain please. I get the VTA/SRA argument, bearing design and the arms I’ve used my Bronze in do allow for those adjustments but would that cause all the OPs issues? I did read up before buying and didn’t see anyone else having big probs.

The WB ACT One arm is 9g. The Bronze is 10.7g. Say the bolts are 0.5g?

The Bronze compliance is 12um - measured normally no need to convert like for some Japanese carts?

Vinyl Engine calc gives that combo a figure in the green a little over 10Hz so that’s in the normal range and should work OK?

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Sorry to hear of your ongoing problems with the Cadenza Bronze.

I have a Cadenza Bronze and a Cadenza Mono both have the same weight and compliance and I have run them both in an SME V and my Trio L-07D turntable’s own arm. The combined effective mass in in the SME V is 22.5g giving a theoretical resonance frequency of 9.7 Hz. The combined mass in the L-07D arm is 29.5g giving 8.5 Hz. Using the resonance test on the HiFi News test record I get a slightly higher resonance frequency than the theoretical approx 11 Hz in the SME and 10 Hz in the L-07D arm, but both are well in range and are close to the 10 Hz ideal figure. Both just track the 300Hz +16dB Tone on the HiFi News Record and the three spaced (beginning, middle & end of side) 300Hz +15dB tracks on side two. They will not properly track +18dB torture track on side 1, but then most MC cartridges I have had will not do this either. I have some difficult to track normal records including some female opera vocals and I am not hearing any distortion on these and some previous other cartridge makes have not fully tracked these records properly.

This is the second Cadenza Bronze I have had as I accidentally bent the cantilever off the first while changing around arms not long after getting it. The first tracked as well as this one and the Cadenza Blue I had before the Bronze was as good as well or perhaps slightly better. I have had other Ortfons in the past that performed as well. So personally I wouldn’t say they were unreliable or inconsistent.

When I wrote off my first Bronze I had some complaints about the contribution of the stylus guard in its demise and the dealer I bought it from was not very helpful either especially considering I bought both the Mono and the Bronze from him at the same time and neither could be considered as cheap. I did though talk to Nick Fuller at Henley (the distributors) who did give me a reasonable discount on the replacement as I showed I was a good customer. He may possibly be of some help in your case.
 
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Many thanks to all for the suggestions and apologies for the delay in replying. The 2nd sample is now boxed waiting to go back to Henley Designs. They are keen to send me a third one which they will check out thoroughly themselves before they send it out. That really is service so I don't want to say anything too much now.

To answer some of the questions/suggestions above
Other arms
I've tried the Bronze in 3 arms, it doesn't track the 14 dB track on the HFN record in any of them and crackles even on the 12 dB track
VTA in the RB300 - I have a Michell VTA adjuster for the RB300. I tried the whole available range with no improvement

Arm resonance
Ortofon describes its own arms as low mass https://www.ortofon.com/support/support-hifi/resonance-frequency. One imagines they would not build and sell arms their own cartridges won't work in.
I did measure the lateral resonance frequency of the Bronze in the W-B using the HFN test record - from memory it came out somewhere between 11 - 13 Hz.
The Transfiguration has the same compliance spec as the Bronze, also resonates around 11-13 Hz in my unipivot and does track the 14 dB track on the HFN record which the Bronze doesn't in either the unipivot or the WB, which might indicate that cartridge arm resonance, although not ideal, is not the reason for the poor tracking

For what it's worth, the right channel mistracks far worse than the left in all three arms. In the WB it is possible to get the bronze to mistrack equally on both channels by adding 70% to the anti-skating drop weight. (Obviously I took the extra weight off after that test since this would equate to something more than double WB's idea of the correct setting and I was worried about what might happen to the cartridge's suspension.) I'm no expert but if stiction was the problem, wouldn't the arm drag against the outside of the groove increasing not decreasing contact with the right channel?
 
Glad your issues are being taken seriously. Looking forwards to positive resolution.
 
Here we go again.

After sitting boxed up waiting to go back to Henley Designs since 21 March, Ortofon finally sent a replacement cartridge. This one has supposedly been checked at the factory, it arrived with the stand pillar sheared almost through which at least suggests some manual (mis-)handling in the factory at some point. Still it's only packaging so hey-ho.

Mindful of the comments above about the arms I had tried, I mounted this one in an Audio Origami fettled Syrinx LE1 loaded with a lead collar to increase the effective mass - the arm/cartridge resonance is quite broad and between 11 and 9 Hz, peaking between 9 and 10 Hz using the HFN test record.
This cartridge tracks the 12 and 14 dB test tones on side one but something odd happens with the 15 dB tones (all four of them) on side 2 and on the 16 dB tone on side 1. The left channel tracks these tones impeccably but the right hand channel resonates - a pure honk if you like. This doesn't sound like mistracking to me - there's no chatter, rawness, crackle or buzz, it's certainly unlike any mistracking I've ever heard before. Adjusting the anti-skate has no effect up to the maximum the arm allows. I'd post a recording if this was allowed and I knew how. It's not the test disc since this doesn't happen with my Transfiguration/unipivot.

I've emailed Henley Designs but wondered if anyone has any ideas what this might be.
 
sq225917 said:
A bad test record?
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You may be right but I don't think so since various other turntables/arm/cartridge set ups I have tried don't do this - I think I've been through 3 Cadenzas, 2 Stanton 881s, a Transfiguration Spirit, and an Ortofon MC10 Super in the WB arm, a Rega RB300, a Linn Akito 2B, the Syrinx, a SME3009, and my unipivot in various combinations on three different turntables. Only this Cadenza does this. I re-tested the Transfiguration in the unipivot (which should be a combination made in hxll, low compliance cartridge and very low mass arm) immediately afterwards and it doesn't do this.
 
You know, I think you've exhausted the possibilities here. It's the cart arm combo. Mostly the cart...
 
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