Let me be crystal clear and avoid any ambiguity. I have been a devotee of the venerable Denon 103 and more recently the Denon 103r for many, many years. Combined with my Allnic AUT 2000 SUT, these carts have consistently provided me a level of musical satisfaction, so far beyond their price points, that every single time I entertained the idea of moving up the high-end audio cartridge chain, I could not justify the cost.
For example,the Shelter 501 series cost almost 4x a Denon and to my ears, I prefered the Denon. I have heard the Lyras, Dynavectors, Airtights, Koetsus, Van Den Huls and many other exorbitantly priced high-end carts and found they all had one thing in common with regard to price/performance: They were overpriced.
The subject of my review is the Kiseki Purpleheart NS and it costs about 8x my Denon. It is housed in a rare purpleheart wood body. It has a boron cantilever, a nude line-contact diamond stylus that is mirror polished, and an output of .48mV with a recommended loading of 400 Ohms and a VTF of 2.4. It is a very detailed cartridge, but not inordinately analytical. It is my Denon resplendently refined with an intoxicating resolution that paints a more complete all encompassing musical tapestry that saturates you with rich, vibrant, inviting, harmonic textures and a tonality to die for. It inextricably connects all of the micro and macro nuances of the recorded event sans colorations producing a realism that must be heard to fully comprehend what I am attempting to convey.
The Kiseki Purpleheart NS will be my next cartridge and for the first time I am able to justify its cost. My love affair with the Denons has been predicated on its fundamental rightness. They sound powerful and energetic. The Denon's midrange flourishes on instrumental timbres that seem correct and are beautiful to hear. Drums are tight and dynamic. Brass, woodwinds and brass are breathy and organic. However, unlike the Kiseki Purpleheart, the 103's do have limited treble resolution. The Kiseki Purpleheart however, puts "more" in front of all my positive descriptions of the Denons.
Finally, let me conclude this review with a clear explanation of my justifying the cost of this cartridge. I preferred the Denons over the Shelter 501, which many audio pundits believe this is the next step up to achieve better performance than the Denon. The economy of scales has allowed the cost of the Denon cartridge to remain the same as it cost in the 70's. As a result, it is unequivocally a high-end audio bargain that could cost near the price of the Shelter 501s. Consequently, that would make the Kiseki Purpleheart NS only 2x more than the Denon. In my humble opinion, the sonic ectasy the Kiseki Purpleheart NS extracts from the grooves of your vinyl is a hell of a lot more than twice as good. It doesn't get much better than this.
- Body: PurpleHeart Wood, 30 mm long
- Cantilever: Solid Boron Rod: 0.3 mm diameter
- Stylus: 0.12 x 0.12 Nude line-contact diamond, mirror polished
- Stylus tip radius: 4 x 120 μm
- Vertical Tracking Angle (VTA): 20 degrees
- Coil: pure iron coil
- Weight: 7 grams
- Output voltage: 0.48mV at 5cm/s
- Internal impedance: 42 ohms
- Frequency response: 20 – 30,000Hz ± 1dB
- Channel balance: 0.2dB
- Channel Separation: 35dB at 1kHz
- Tracking ability at 315Hz at a tracking force of 2.6 grams: 80 μm
- Dynamic Compliance: 16 μm/mN
- Recommended loading: 400 ohms
- Recommend tracking force: 2.0 – 2.6 grams
- Optimum tracking force: 2.46 grams
- Recommended tone arm mass: Medium
- Optimum working temperature: 20 °C
- Break-in period: 50 – 100 hours