At the beginning of this year I moved abode and consequently had to set-up my hifi anew. I lost my dedicated mains supply, the room had significantly different dimensions nescitating much experimentation with speaker positioning and I found that floor wasn’t solid enough to prevent needle jump on my turntable with any foottraffic, even when being careful. I put the turntable away until I could put up a wall shelf and focused on streaming as my main source. The present lockdown and solitary confinement encouraged me to sort out my turntable, only to find the cantilever on my Dynavector DV-20X2H was bent!! Not sure how or when this happened, and the cost of a direct replacement was oit of my budget at this time. I started a trial of Qobuz (surprisingly easy to set up) and trawled the internet for cartridge ideas. Of course I realised that any replacement would need to be installed and aligned by myself too and it’s been many years since I tried to do this! I really wanted to play my vinyl again, so finally plumped for a Goldring 2400, obviously with no auditioning possible. I hoped this would be an “adequate” choice, but at half the cost of the Dynavector and with my untested installation skills I was expecting to be underwhelmed but at least able to play my records.
The result has been rather unexpected - I really like this cartridge! It is fluid and musical, even after only 4 lp sides I found myself listening to the music and not the hifi! If I try to find differences it’s maybe not as delicate in delivery as the 20x2H but I feel it boogies better, and the more records I play the more I want to simply rediscover my collection. Trying to describe how any hifi component sounds is difficult, and none more so than a cartridge I think, but I’m amazed how this cartridge is drawing me into the music and showing me new delights on most every record I play! Nice to get a win in these depressing times!!
