Vintage Goldring G800. Pleasantly surprised!

[bikerhifinut]

Hi folks.

I've had an old G800H cartridge in the toybox for a couple of years, paid a fiver for it at Tonbridge a couple or 3 years ago. Minus the diamond on the end of the cantilever. It had a standard 800 stylus not the H high output one.
Now I knew the bodies were the same in the 800 range, only the styli varied.
I blagged a genuine NOS stylus D110S this week for about the same price as one of those swiss pattern jobbies.
Went in the OL1 RB250 based arm today, set up and tracking force of 2.5g.
Wasn't expecting much at all, but i was very pleasantly surprised.
Yes it's not as refined or as good at retrieving the last bit of detail as the Ortofon quintet, I'd be a bit surprised if it did! But it really does have a nice "zip" to the sound and I think I can see why a couple of Dom harpers customers have had G800s retipped and tweaked by him.
It's a "Moving iron" design for those who don't already know and I wonder if that has something to do with it? Of course they probably went down that line as tiny powerful magnets weren't so readily available in the early 70s so a big cylindrical magnet in the cartridge body was used to provide a field.

Anyway I just thought i'd share that with you all.

For the record I am using a Phono 3S with it.

Andy.

[Richard]

Hi Andy, yes, my first proper hifi cart around 1976 was a G800E eliptical! Brother had the reviewers' favourite M75EDII which had a bit more detail iirc but the Goldring had a "meatier" sound. I gave in to peer pressure and bought an M95ED next which was swings and roundabouts, more detailed but not a lot more enjoyable