Phono Cartridge Reviews

More on the Blue Point Special, from December 1993 (Vol.16 No.12):

For the purposes of this review, I arranged to borrow a sample of the now-discontinued Troika. As Linn claims a Troika-like level of sound quality from the Klyde, comparisons with the departing Troika are a natural. The $1995 Troika is—or was—around double the price of the Klyde, so I also included comparisons with Sumiko's Class-C ranked $295 Blue Point Special I reviewed in Vol.16 No.4.

The Linn analog rig came into my system at a time when I was using the $1195 Well-Tempered Record Player and Sumiko Blue Point Special as my reference for phono playback, and I have to tell you, it was pretty shocking to switch over to the LP12. The midpriced WTRP is a terrific turntable/arm combo for the money, but the Linn rig took everything up by more than a few notches. The WTRP held up admirably to the comparison, but the difference in sound between the LP12/Klyde and the WTRP/Blue Point Special was pretty dramatic.

The giant-killing $295 Sumiko Blue Point Special was far and away the best of the eight cartridges I reviewed this year, even offering a higher level of sound quality than several much pricier cartridges I tried, like the $400 Signet AT-OC9 and $695 AudioQuest 404i-H. In addition, I'd been using the Sumiko as my reference for over a year—it was a natural to see if the $1095 Klyde was indeed over three times as good as the overachieving Sumiko.

The Klyde/LP12 was much better than the Sumiko/WTRP. But after mounting the Klyde to the WTRP and the Blue Point Special to the LP12, I was shocked at what I was hearing—the Blue Point Special mounted to the LP12 killed the Klyde mounted on the WTRP! In fact, the distance between the Sumiko/LP12 rig and the Klyde/WTRP rig was far greater than what I heard when the Klyde was on the Linn and the Sumiko was on the Well-Tempered.

So I switched 'em back to their original 'tables—sure enough, the Klyde on the LP12 sounded much better than the other rig, just like before. But the Klyde/LP12 did not enjoy as wide a lead over the less expensive combo as the Sumiko/LP12 did over the Klyde/WTRP. It looked like much of what I'd been hearing earlier had been due to the LP12, not the Klyde. And that meant it was time for some head-to-head comparisons between the two cartridges on the same 'table.

With both cartridges mated to the LP12/Ekos/Lingo, I have to say that while the Klyde had a big, gutsy sound, I strongly preferred the Blue Point Special. The Klyde had the heavier bottom end, but at the cost of bass articulation and low-end detail—the Blue Point Special had a faster, tighter low end, and was able to extract rhythmic and tonal subtleties in the bass range that the Klyde obscured. Electric bass lines, one of the four major food groups, bounced and hit with more energy and tautness via the Sumiko. The Linn cartridge had the fuller-sounding balance, but the Sumiko's low end was much more lively and detailed—you could say the Blue Point Special's bottom sounded more "Linn" than the Linn, but then you might get beaten up one day by a couple of Scots shouting, "Angus, what's the frequency?"

Moving up the range, the Klyde was again outscored by the Sumiko through the all-important midrange. This is probably the Sumiko's strongest suit, and the Klyde sounded somewhat thick and muffled by comparison. On tracks with well-recorded instruments and vocals like Nirvana's "Lithium," from Nevermind, the Klyde sounded less open and clear than the Sumiko, whose clear, open midrange reproduced Kurt Cobain's vocal with more natural presence and freedom from coloration. The Klyde had a slightly pinched quality—almost a nasal coloration—in the lower midrange that ranked it below the Blue Point Special in terms of openness and clarity. The two cartridges' distinct characters held up whether I used the solid-state Exposure phono stage, which uses separate circuits for high-output and low-output preamplification, or the tube/FET hybrid Sonic Frontiers phono stage, which merely adds a 20dB FET gain stage to its lone phono section tube when using a low-output cartridge.

As for the two cartridges' HF performance, the Klyde had a bit more emphasis in the low treble and a brighter, more cutting high end than the Blue Point Special, which sounded smoother and more musically natural. The Klyde had very good HF detail, but at the expense of a degree of sibilance that the less expensive cartridge was free of. On some recordings, the Klyde's more tipped-up low treble gave it a more detailed and forward character, but the added bite that went along with it stuck out in comparison with the Sumiko's smoother yet no less detailed high end. And in terms of throwing up a believable sense of space around and between instruments, the Klyde was again no match for the still-surprising Blue Point Special, whose capabilities appear to be even greater than what I'm hearing with it on the WTRP.

Overall, the Sumiko just sounded much closer to the real thing on the LP12 than the three-times-as-expensive Klyde. The Klyde certainly had a satisfyingly weighty presentation, but the Sumiko was so much more open, dynamic, and detailed that it seemed as if the two cartridges' price tags had been reversed. If I bought the fully loaded Linn and I had a grand to spend on a cartridge for it, I'd definitely choose the $295 Blue Point Special over the $1095 Klyde (footnote 1).

While the Linn Klyde is certainly capable of better sound overall—when mounted to the LP12/Ekos/Lingo—than a good midpriced analog rig like my $1195 Well-Tempered Record Player and $295 Sumiko Blue Point Special cartridge, it suffers in direct comparisons with the lower-priced cartridge when the benefits of the LP12/Ekos/Lingo are applied equally to both cartridges to level the playing field.—Corey Greenberg

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Footnote 1: Michael Fremer commented in August 1995 (Vol.18 No.8) that he considered Sumiko's $195 Blue Point high-output moving-coil to be a budget "reference." "Other choices are available at this price point, and some very fine cartridges are priced lower," he wrote, "but I find the Blue Point's overall resolution, speed, and portrayal of dynamics an attractive combination—even if it does have a bit of zip on top."—Editor