What needle are you using with the 4000?

I have an ortofon OM actually I don't like it - it picks up alot of detail but also alot of the vinyl scratch and pop- the info is there and can filter eq it etc - but I actually prefer my old 500al carts. not to sure how the Arkiv compare...

grassroots wrote:I have an ortofon OM actually I don't like it - it picks up alot of detail but also alot of the vinyl scratch and pop- the info is there and can filter eq it etc - but I actually prefer my old 500al carts. not to sure how the Arkiv compare...

The 500 has been my sampling cartridge as far back as I can remember.
If you have them on a deck that you use for just sampling they last forever.

I was thinking about picking up another 500. They have this round sound to them. They have a pretty good bass response. I am looking for something that compliments the 4000 phono amp.

The 500s still sound good with the 4k pre amp so that won't be a problem.
another good thing about them is if you are the type of sample that does a lot of skipping around on the record they still hold up well.

The price also doesn't hurt it's value point.

I'm considering a 500 series cart for my Stanton deck. I picked up a shit load of 78s a few years back but the 78 stylus for the 600 series is silly money for what will end up being a bit of novelty sampling.

The 78 stylus for the 500 cart is cheap.

Yeah I had always used 500s for sampling and the Trackmaster I for cuts.
Tried Trackmaster II and the gave me all kinds of problems.
Once I started using Serato started getting much more life out of cartridges.

Now it doesn't really matter since I mix in Traktor with controllers most of the time.


Funny part is I would just use the normal 500 on a TTX1 for 78s and it worked fine.
I would think if you get the 78 stylus it would perform well.

ntalec wrote:Funny part is I would just use the normal 500 on a TTX1 for 78s and it worked fine.
I would think if you get the 78 stylus it would perform well.

I'm a bit wary of potentially trashing my current stylus and the records if I don't get a proper 78 stylus. I'll get on the case soon because it's winding me up having these records here and not being able to play them.

Coz wrote:

ntalec wrote:Funny part is I would just use the normal 500 on a TTX1 for 78s and it worked fine.
I would think if you get the 78 stylus it would perform well.

I'm a bit wary of potentially trashing my current stylus and the records if I don't get a proper 78 stylus. I'll get on the case soon because it's winding me up having these records here and not being able to play them.

No doubt it the way to go since you have lots of 78s I only dealt with the occassional 78 so it wasn't critical.
I just mentioned it to say that the 500 with the 78 stylus should sound good.

ntalec wrote:I just mentioned it to say that the 500 with the 78 stylus should sound good.

Cheers.

MaZe wrote:

dustymaestro wrote:How about for just listening to music?

I don't know much about the true audiophile cart market, mostly because I can't fathom spending that type of money on a cart but, when I was over thinking this exact same thing, I bought a Shure White Label, which is still in the box mind you. After all my research, it seemed like the best bang for the buck quality needle. Only thing is, you can't backspin on it for sampling and I'm a backspinning monster.

You might have them set up wrong, I do heavy scratching and beat juggles all day with whitelabels and very very rarely get a skip.

Wait a min, am I even understanding you correctly? or did you mean you can't backspin on them because of another reason other than skips?

I went with a silver Concorde pro. Let's see how it performs...