Universal Ceramic Cartridge and Stylus

This universal ceramic cartridge with sapphire tip stylus for record players and turntables goes by many names such as JTC, XL445, SW-TS004, and T-Star518-2. It looks like a clone of the Chuo Denshi CZ800, also known as, Pfanstiehl p-188/p-188d. It has a black and red design plastic, manufactured in China, and appears on eBay and many online sites for as little as one pound including postage. I decided to buy one of these for review and take apart to see if it was worth the money. The manufacturer does not state if it has any built-in mechanical RIAA compensation, nor do they state the capacitance value, however using my digital meter I managed to get an average value of 985 pF (approx). The output voltage figure they state is 150 mV to 300 mV.

Review

If you could buy a ceramic cartridge and stylus for one-hundredth of the price of a moving-magnet (MM) or moving –coil (MC) one, and it produced a half-decent sound, then many would say that, that is a good bargain. The fact is that these types of cartridges are capable of producing high quality sound, but the problem is that conventional preamplifiers are seldom capable of realising this performance. Electrical parameters such as self-capacitance of the ceramic and the degree of mechanical equalization vary greatly in differing constructions.

Ceramic cartridges do not have a voice coil; instead, they use the piezoelectric effect to produce the signal, therefore their construction is much simpler, and consequently they are much cheaper to produce than magnetic cartridges. If you are new to these types of cartridges, then the first experiment worth performing is to see if you can measure any resistance between the pins. If you connect the probes across the right+ and right- pins, you will notice that your meter does not register any resistance, and it should be the same with left+ and left- pins. At this point, beginners usually think that since there is no voice coil, the signal output must be very weak, however, the converse is true. The signal output is much greater; consequently, it does not even require a preamplifier for further amplification.

When I connected mine, I found the sound to be very crisp and clear. The definition and treble were certainly there, however the bass was lacking slightly, and not to the fashionable levels we tend to use today. However passing the signal through a cheap standard graphic equalizer with 10 dB boost/cut made a great improvement, and I hate to say it, but it did sound reasonably good.

Equalization

There seems to be many myths and old wives tales about requiring high impedance loading to correct the equalization. I suppose there must me many people selling preamplifiers with high-Z for ceramic cartridges, as it is almost fashion these days. Low impedance loading usually has the effect of cutting a small amount of bass; however, an additional bass control can counteract this cut, and make the response flat again. If you have an in-line graphic equalizer, then that is usually sufficient.

With this cartridge, the signal was surprisingly strong and I fed it directly into my graphic equalizer, which then fed it to spare RCA auxiliary inputs on my amp, and surprisingly that was sufficient! I was therefore able to do away with the RIAA preamplifier. Another advantage is that since ceramic cartridges do not use a voice coil, they are impervious to EMF noise from the platter motor or nearby transformers. Of course, if you have the big bucks then go online and splash out on some little boxes and gadgets.

Price/eBay

These are usually for sale on eBay and the price can vary from as little as one pound to as much as ten pounds and even more on other sites. The manufacturing is not perfect so the visual things to look out for are a straight cantilever, and vertical diamond stylus.

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