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In Reply to: RE: Shinon Red posted by Pix4work2 on January 24, 2015 at 18:14:23
Hi
Surely safety regulations concerning boron can't be the reason. Here's a shortlist of currently available boron-cantilevered cartridges:
Ortofon Quintet Black
Ortofon Cadenza Black (plus their esoteric designs such as the MC Anna)
Nagaoka MP-200, 300 and 500
Audio-Technica AT-OC9 (and higher-end models)
I'm sure there must be others!
Mark
Follow Ups:
At the time certain EPA rulings were fairly lax ( this was c.1990). While boron production and use resumed after, it took several years for the manufacturing companies to install special ventilation systems (clean air rooms) and air fed respirator systems for workers. Such systems are not cheap, nor can they be instantly installed.
Ignorance of regulatory rulings has affected many products within the audio world, Polystyrene film ceased production in ALL first world countries back in around the late 1990's because one byproduct of polystyrene production is dioxin. Yeah polystyrene is made again, but primarily in Mainland China where regulatory restrictions are very lax.
The same reason is why speaker magnet production has moved to Mainland China. Most modern magnets are doped with heavy and rare earth elements. In the US and Europe, there are strict respiratory requirements for the workers and any waste ( dust, shavings, etc) must be handled as toxic waste: very expensive. In China you can just sweep it into the street....(just about)
Ah, interesting!
Of course, it's never entirely clear who makes the cantilever/stylus assemblies for each cartridge, especially when the maker is a small company. It appears only a tiny number of firms have the capability - and presumably their main business is elsewhere (like Nagaoka, for example).
Taking up your point, Pro-Ject use an outside contractor to make their carbon-fibre arm-tubes, as this is also a pretty nasty material to work with in the 'raw' state.
Namiki was the largest cantilever styli maker in Japan. They could make sapphire/ruby cantilevers and even made the diamond ones for Dynavector , IIRC
Ernst Benz dominated the European scene. IIRC, he actually designed the laser cutters to cut and shape the diamond styli. He also pioneered the use of UV cured glues for adhering the styli. Prior Styli were mounted in a socket, or had a small hole milled out in the cantilever end for the stylus to be inserted.
Benz, maybe in response to the EPA requirements simply flattened the cantilever end and mounted the stylus against the flat building up a small fillet of glue around the base of the styli. The claim was that the stylus then made a more intimate contact with the cantilever rather than floating around in a sleeve of glue.
Ernst was a very pleasant to gentleman to speak to, He once laughingly told me he could carry a palm full of naked styli worth a million dollars....He once made more money supplying OEM styli rather building his own cartridges
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