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Acoustical Systems – Archon upgraded with boron cantilever and Shibata EVO tip

An easy going High End cartridge with enough output to be a real treat for your MC phono stages.

Shipping offered to France with 250€ in cart, (to Europe 350€)

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We received this cartridge with a seriously bent cantilever. But this was not the only issue.

By looking at at the inside of the cartridge it is visible that mechanically it had been put together imprecisely. The magnet is misaligned between the front and back yoke and the magnet assembly touches the body so there is no proper isolation between  the magnet and the body. This means that in order to repair the cartridge we had to be taken fully apart and rebuilt. The damper was also offering a very steep angle for the cantilever which was rather unadapted to correct VTA settings The origin of the problem might have been induced by a wrong piano wire tension.

In order to make this cartridge fully operational we had to :

  • full disassembly of the cartridge to restore proper mechanical construction of the cartridge
  • thorough cleaning of the cartridge
  • damper tampering  in order to allow correct VTF and preliminary piano wire tension adjustment(s)
  • adjustment of the coils and setting of the coil former in optimal position for best channel separation and of course optimal balance between right and left channel
  • instead of the original Shibata EVO stylus on aluminium cantilever we installed a Shibata EVO stylus on a boron cantilever

After repair we measured the following specifications :

  • output level : 0,5 mV
  • nominal Vertical Tracking Force : 1.8 g
  • tracking : > 80 micron / 18mN / 315Hz lateral
  • compliance : 17 x 10 – 6 cm/dyn
  • impedance : 6.8 ohms
  • mass : 11.5 g

The Acoustical Systems – Archon is a cross coil design with a confortable output for this reason, it will match well with most solid state phono stage. By replacing the original aluminium cantilever with a boron cantilever we gained :

  • better rigidity of the cantilever assembly (more linearity of the frequency response, better transient response)
  • lesser weight (lower moving effective mass ensuring better tracking)
  • original internal aluminium tube resonances suppression (less colorations)
The cartridge comes complete with  :
  • original boxing (there is a few slight scuffs on the leather parts of the box)

The Archon cartridge is after repairs in NM condition and fully functional with better specifications than in original state.

We do believe that after our repairs this cartridge another level of performances.