Since I bought my Technics second-hand, and they came with Ortofon Concorde cartridges, I’ve never owned any actual headshells. But now one of my Concordes has broken, and I’ve been wanting to get some Shure 447’s, but this means I will need some headshells (unfortunately the M-447-H is not available around here)
Obviously I’ve been looking at original Technics headshell, but they’re quite pricey around here. I’m not one to think that headshells have an impact on sound, but a mate of mine claimed that cheaper headshells might have dodgy terminals and risk damaging the tonearm connections.
So I was just wondering, does anyone have experience with buying headshells? Do you have any recommendations or words of advice, what to watch out for etc?
Not really, headshells are headshells. I kept the Stanton headshells from my first turntables and just mounted the Shure M44’s to it straight up and they work just fine. I’d only get Technics headshells for the look, but these cheap Stanton headshells work just fine.
I have stanton h4s headshells, really like them since they take a 2g and 4g weight without breaking the bank. Other than that i use tech mk2 headshells with the 3g under mounted weight.
So let’s talk about the headshell weights. I am using Technics Headshells with M44-7s set to 3.5g on a 1200 Mk5. And yes, I am scratching. Adding 2-3g seems like A LOT of extra weight - am I missing something?
I know this is reaching a new level of geekery but can you beautiful, wonderful people post Turntable model /head shell/cart/counterweight setting/ headshell weights (if applicable) and if you scratch or not?
You want to use Technics headshells. Contrary to popular belief, the tonearm contacts in a 1200 are gold plated. The Technics headshell contacts are plated with the same material. If you use a cheaper headshell, you risk corrosion due to the lesser metals interacting with the contacts.
the additional weights are included for turntables that don’t have an adjustable counterweight.
If you use a 1200, throw them away…they’re useless.
As for weight…I think i use 2g…not sure. I was using 1.5 when I had whitelabels. It should say in the manual that came with your carts what the ideal tracking weight is…just use something in that range and if you can’t scratch without skipping, get better at it.
I use about 2.75-3g; I’m pretty sure that’s what the manual recommends. Yeah throw out the extra weights, no use for those. And these headshells should be fine if you want to go cheap: