Sumiko Pearwood Celebration II in da house!

[f1 fan]

Originally Posted by Antonmb

My weekend project. Just picked up the Pearwood demo from my dealer, will be installing on Saturday.

Tony....congrats on your purchase, looking forward to reading your impressions.

Dave

[jwhite613]

Originally Posted by f1 fan

Tony....congrats on your purchase, looking forward to reading your impressions.

Dave

+1

[Antonmb]

Sumiko Pearwood Celebration II now installed on my Rega P9. Setup was a challenge. I usually use a Mintlp Best protractor, which is an etched mirror and requires aligning the cantilever with markings on the glass. It's usually very effective but because of the short cantilever tucked back under the cartridge body it was very difficult to use the Mintlp effectively. I ended up using the Stevenson protractor from vinylengine.com. Ultimately not as accurate since I'm aligning the cartridge body rather than the cantilever, but think I got it pretty well dialed in. First impressions:

Soundstage, focus and imaging were an immediate and significant improvement over my Clearaudio Virtuoso Wood. Soundstage is wider, instrument locations are more clearly defined across the soundstage, and depth is improved. Bass also seems more solid and better defined. The only negative so far is treble seems a little etched and edgy on some recordings. Also I here ticks and pops a little more. I'm not sure if this is phono stage settings, I'm still experimenting. Right now I have resistance at 100 ohms and capacitance at 1nf on the Linn Uphorik, but will play around over the next few days. The cartridge is a demo from my dealer, who says it has about 100 hours on it so break-in shouldn't be an issue.

So far so good if I can tame the upper end with settings.

[Puma Cat]

Tony,
I'm not having any treble etch issues...but my Pearwood is riding a bit tail low, and I am going through a step-up transformer, which may smooth things out a bit. You might try a higher resistance load if possible?

[Antonmb]

Originally Posted by Puma Cat

Tony,
I'm not having any treble etch issues...but my Pearwood is riding a bit tail low, and I am going through a step-up transformer, which may smooth things out a bit. You might try a higher resistance load if possible?

Thanks, I appreciate the feedback. On my turntable, set at 2.0 grams it seems pretty level on regular vinyl and just a tad tail low on 180g and heavier. I haven't had a chance to do any listening tonight but will try increasing the resistance tomorrow.
Thanks again for the suggestion.
Tony

[Antonmb]

Have been listening for several days now with higher resistance and capacitance. Also changed out the Rega felt mat for a Herbie's Grungebuster, which is a little thicker than the stock felt on the P9 and brought the tail of the cartridge down a bit. Edginess is gone and the cartridge is now everything I was hoping for. I ended up buying the demo from my dealer at a nice discount so I didn't have to take it back off again. Stephen, thanks very much for the suggestions.

Tony

[Puma Cat]

Tony,
Glad it worked out for you. I think having the cartridge in a tail low setup is the key for these on Rega tables.

They are pretty wonderful cartridges. It must be really nice on a P9.