When I met Peter Ledermann at T.H.E. Show and spent some time listening to his cartridge named, “The Voice”, I was quite taken with what I thought was one of the most listenable cartridges I had heard. Not in some euphonic way, or anything that I could put my finger on, but The Voice was just so unobtrusive. I didn’t get the impression of a mechanical device with a rock being scraped through a tiny vinyl groove. It was one of my favorite rooms at T.H.E. Show 2009.
I felt (and still feel) that The Voice realized the promise of the moving-iron cartridge design. The Grados, even at their best, always fell short of the best moving-coils. Sometimes it was tracking. Sometimes it was detail retrieval. At the end of the day, I think it came down to the stylus and cantilevers employed by Grado not matching up to the best exotic materials of the competition. The Voice was a design that didn’t sound like a moving-iron, moving-magnet, or moving-coil. It had some magic all its own. It employed the moving-iron principal, but was built with exacting perfection.
I guess I made a decent impression on Peter since he offered me a chance at reviewing the Sussurro when he was finished with the design. In the few times I’ve had with Peter over the phone (and at T.H.E. Show), he’s struck me as a man of honor, integrity, intelligence and humanity. For more on the story behind Peter, please read Gary Lea’s interview with Peter.
An E-Type with Lead in the Boot
There are a lot of misconceptions about cartridges, one being that moving-coils have less mass. Well, sometimes yes, but not always. One thing not figured into the equation is the wires leading off the coils, which act like springs. Many medium- and high-output moving-coils have substantial windings. It would be like a supermodel with junk in her trunk, or a sports car with bricks in it.
With a moving-magnet or moving-iron, you can make the magnet/iron very small, attach a low-mass cantilever, and employ a line contact stylus. This gives you less mass, higher compliance, better trackability, and less record wear than many moving-coil cartridges. Not that it’s a new idea. Shure spent the better part of 40 years designing, making, improving, and then discontinuing the V15. At its best, the V15 series could track circles around cartridges costing 20 times as much. I know because I heard it in my house. At its worst, it was merely a great tracking cartridge that made you turn on the TV in search of a good movie. I know because it happened to me. Whether it was the inductance, the not-very-rigid user replaceable stylus, or just so-so materials, the best moving-magnets and moving-irons have always come up short when compared to the best moving-coil competition.
Peter, with the Sussurro, has attempted to address every possible aspect of design and execution that has heretofore limited the performance of the moving-iron phonograph cartridge. He has fewer wire windings in the cartridge’s magnetic circuit, reducing impedance and dramatically reducing inductance. Lower inductance means better high frequency extension and better resolution. He has employed a ruby cantilever, which is low mass, low resonance and highly rigid. He has affixed a complicated, multifaceted, highly polished stylus for excellent high frequency resolution, low distortion, and minimal “groove pinch”. Opposite the stylus, the tiny block of iron is of very high purity (better magnetic properties than “any old iron”) and very low mass (better tracking, lower distortion). Holding it all together is a nicely crafted wood body, shaped in a way to afford some protection for the stylus and cantilever, and keeping detritus from the all-important “guts”. To allow for ultra precise adjustment of VTA/SRA, Peter has introduced a nifty swiveling mounting block that lets you adjust VTA at the cartridge end of the arm (as opposed to the more conventional method of lowering/raising the back of the arm). This will be handy for users of arms that lack VTA adjustment. This last feature is something that I think should be an option, not standard, but that’s because I can adjust VTA rather easily. Taken in whole, this is an attempt to build THE state-of-the-art moving-iron, using materials and methods usually reserved for the best moving-coils.
For those of you comparing the Sussurro to The Voice, there are major differences. The Voice is a lower cost, higher compliance, higher output cartridge. This will make it a better choice for some of you who are on a budget and don’t have a closely matched phono stage and/or tonearm.
The Sussurro was mounted on my trusty SME V. It’s not a necessarily optimal match, by the way. I tried to get a different, heavier tonearm that would better suit the low (-ish) compliance of the Sussurro. I had tried to arrange a 12” VPI unipivot, but that didn’t work out. The turntable was my redoubtable Denon DP80 direct drive in ancient VPI plinth, driving Peter’s phono stage through Wireworld phono cable. Speakers were my modded Maggies or the Sanders 10B electrostatics. Amp, for the most part, was Sanders’ ESL amp (a great amp for any hard-to-drive speaker). The preamp was either the Allnic L1500 linestage or StereoKnight’s Magnetic Silverstone B&R (fully balanced, remote controlled, transformer volume control). Associated wiring ranged from XLO Reference, StereoKnight (balanced interconnect), Furutech, and Aural Symphonics.
Mounting the Sussurro was easy, except that my sample lacked a stylus guard. That made me a little nervous, but at least it had tapped screws. One complication is that you are limited on the length of screws that you can use. Peter sent a good selection, plus I have quite a few hanging around the place. Just under the tapped holes is the wooden body of the cartridge. The width of the cartridge is somewhat greater than many cartridges, and the user-adjustable mounting bracket allows you to mount to most tonearms. It might present some problems on those flimsy old SME headshells that have the sides that point down and run parallel to the sides of the cartridge. I would hope you’d use something better than one of those, but in case you do, you might have space constraints.
Setting VTA and overhang was no more difficult than the ZYX Airy 3 or the Haniwa cartridge (under review). No surprises. The mounting bracket does allow for adjustment at the end of the tonearm. This could help two groups: if you use a tonearm that does not have adjustable VTA; if you run out of adjustment because you either have an abnormally short or tall (in relation to the platter) tonearm setup. My SME V had sufficient adjustment, so I did not mess with the Sussurro’s value-added features.
Loading was something of a challenge for me. Most phono stages I’ve had are geared towards either the stereotypical MM or the low-output moving-coils. The Haniwa phono stage (also under review) had 3 ohms and 47K settings. The Allnic phono stage was similarly designed for low-output or high-output, with a low impedance transformer setup for moving-coils. The Haniwa was too far outside the range of adjustment for the Sussurro. The Allnic, on the lowest gain setting (hence the highest impedance tap on the transformer), sounded magical. For a brief period, I ran this combo, and it made some of the finest music I’ve ever heard. However, Peter designed the cartridge to work best with a 1-2K load. This is something his new phono stage can do, so I decided to use the Soundsmith MCP2. By the way, the MCP2 deserves its own article, although it is featured at the end of this review.
