modern turntable diamond disc/Pathé

[kirtley2012]

i have always wanted to play Pathé and edison diamond disc records but have never bought a adaptor for it for my gramophone or a acctual machine but i do have a KAM 2000 turntable which has the 78 rpm function, how would i wire the cardridge for vertical records and also would a standard 78 rpm stylus be correct for DD's and Pathé's?

[Wolfe]

This topic comes up from time to time here. You can wire the cartridge by reversing the negative leads for each channel. R + / L - and L + and R -

A 'conventional' might work alright for DD's. Pathés have very shallow grooves, however, so the stylus can easily skip. I have found that if the Pathé record isn't warped and is pressed absolutely dead center, a regular stylus, as long as it holds the groove, will sound fine. Or you'll have to get a dedicated stylus from Expert Stylus Co.

[estott]

Of course you will still have one problem- those discs should play at 80 rpm

[kirtley2012]

no problem!, at 78 rpm it can still be adjusted +/- 20% which means it can go up to 93.6 rpm

[VintageTechnologies]

I have no trouble tracking a Pathé with a 78 rpm stylus using a lightweight adjustable tone arm. A proper sized stylus might reduce surface noise a bit.

[dd2u]

Do not change the wiring of the cartridge until you have verified that you can actually track and play a Pathé with your stylus and cartridge. You may be wasting your time.

A mono cartridge, or stereo cartridge wired to mono for lateral cut records will not work of course; most of the music will cancel out and you will only be left with surface noise and distortion! However, you can listen to a Pathé (or any vertically cut disc) with a stereo cartridge wired in the normal way. Without further processing, the vertical-cut music coming from the two stereo speakers will merely be out of phase. You will still be able to hear it. It is not ideal, but it is sufficient to check that it will track properly. Once you have verified this, then you can generate the correct mono signal, either by changing the cartridge wiring, or via a suitable pre-amp, or even by changing the wiring of your speakers (if that is convenient, acceptable, and does not cause damage to your amplifier).

I have never been satisfied with my efforts to play Pathés electrically. Tracking is a problem; it mostly works, but I get the feeling that it only "just" works. Also surface noise seems excessive. I would be interested to hear hints from others. What stylus size, profile and material is recommended?

[OrthoSean]

Do not change the wiring of the cartridge until you have verified that you can actually track and play a Pathé with your stylus and cartridge. You may be wasting your time.

A mono cartridge, or stereo cartridge wired to mono for lateral cut records will not work of course; most of the music will cancel out and you will only be left with surface noise and distortion! However, you can listen to a Pathé (or any vertically cut disc) with a stereo cartridge wired in the normal way. Without further processing, the vertical-cut music coming from the two stereo speakers will merely be out of phase. You will still be able to hear it. It is not ideal, but it is sufficient to check that it will track properly. Once you have verified this, then you can generate the correct mono signal, either by changing the cartridge wiring, or via a suitable pre-amp, or even by changing the wiring of your speakers (if that is convenient, acceptable, and does not cause damage to your amplifier).

I have never been satisfied with my efforts to play Pathés electrically. Tracking is a problem; it mostly works, but I get the feeling that it only "just" works. Also surface noise seems excessive. I would be interested to hear hints from others. What stylus size, profile and material is recommended?

I'll agree tracking can be an issue sometimes, but with patience, additional weight on the headshell and even tilting my deck at times, I can get almost any Pathé to play electrically without too much issue, including 14 inch center start ones. With a collection I bought several years back now came a GE VR cartridge and an assortment of different styli (I assume) from Expert, must be from the 60s, but they work very well especially with Pathé discs because it was built for heavier tracking which is often necessary with these.

Having a few different sized styli helps. Some track and sound best with a smaller (2.3 TE) and some with a very large (7 mil conical) stylus. It really depends and there doesn't seem to be any hard and fast rule here, same goes with Edison Diamond Discs, although I've found nothing larger than a 3.8 TE sounds better and still, sometimes those do best with my 1.3 TE.

As for rewiring a cartridge, it only takes a few seconds to reverse the phase by swapping two wires. My preamp / EQ has a built in vertical switch, so I don't have to do that though.

Sean

[John Svensson]

Just curious, what make & model of pre-amp do you have? I wouldn't think that is a common feature. Thanks. John

[OrthoSean]

Hi John,

I have a KAB Souvenier MKII. It's a great piece of equipment with several EQ curves for many different types of records already preset. It also has various click and noise filters in it.

Check out www.kabusa.com to see it.

Sean

[phonojim]

I have a Lenco/Bogen turntable which has continuously variable speed from below 16 to above 80. My "workhorse" cartridge is a Shure M-44. These normally come with a .7mil tip, but I use 78 tips from Astatic 89t cartridges. I use gel superglue to hold them onto the cantilever behind the original tip for extra strength. They are 3 mil and work quite well on over 90 percent of my 78s and will also track Edison and Pathé discs well, although Pathés do require a little extra weight. I keep a stack of pennies, nickels and dimes close by for that purpose. I also built a phasing switch into the base of the turntable so I can go right from vertical to lateral easily. Beyond that, I use one side of an old Radio Shack 12 band per channel equalizer and a Heathkit 14 watt amp that I built when I was in high school in 1960. This is fed into a Fisher XP-55 speaker. The whole thing works quite well, and as you can see, I get by as cheaply as possible while still getting good results.
BTW: handling the 3 mil tips is no more difficult than working on Edison sapphire cylinder styli. You need high quality tweezers, bright light and lots of magnification. Also a steady hand, which is becoming the difficult part as I get older.