The Frankenstein Cartridge is Alive!

The cart­ridge is a Pick­er­ing XV-15/625E — but the 625E part (the stylus — it was broken when I ordered the cart­ridge) was replaced by a mod­ern EVG Swiss (Dia­mond 0.25 x 0.7 mil nude ellipt­ic­al tip for 16,33,45 rpm records) replace­ment from V‑M Audio Enthusiasts.

The head­shell is a spare for my Akai AP-Q41. They too are kinda hard to find and the one I received had a broken lift/drop cue­ing handle.

The 3D Print­er enters the room and was respons­ible for pro­du­cing a new cue­ing handle, as well as the car­riage and spacers to mount the cart­ridge to the headshell.

Then a simple mat­ter to con­nect the wires, mount it to the ton­earm, rebal­ance the ton­earm, remem­ber­ing to add 1 gram to off­set the weight of the stylus brush.

And tunes happened. Sound­ing very, very nice for a 40 year old cartridge.