Spin Doctor #9: Soviet-era Hi-Fi & 2 Aidas phono cartridges

Spin Doctor #9: Soviet-era Hi-Fi & 2 Aidas phono cartridges

In 1985, I visited what was then generally known as Soviet Estonia with my household. My paternal grandparents, Mimi and Pop, had emigrated to the US from this small Baltic nation in 1929. Fifty-six years later, after greater than a decade of rejection, the household was granted permission by the Soviet authorities to go to our ancestral homeland, and the entire household, together with Mimi, made the trek. (Pop died in 1962.)

Once we had been there, we had been roughly free to maneuver round within the capital metropolis Tallinn, however leaving town was strictly forbidden, besides as a part of a deliberate group tour with our KGB minders—er, "Intourist guides."

Mimi was initially from an island off the west coast of Estonia known as Saaremaa. In 1985, it was dwelling to a number of army amenities, so a go to there was off the desk. To get round this, Mimi arrange camp inside her room on the Viru Hotel in Tallinn whereas dozens of lengthy, misplaced Estonian family members made the journey to go to her (and the remainder of the household) there.

In her room, she doled out the blue denims, Western music, and different American desirables we had managed to sneak throughout the border. Each of us had been tasked with bringing two huge suitcases crammed with all types of American goodies. After all, each American vacationer wants 5 pairs of recent Levis in varied sizes and a pile of sweet for a two-week journey, proper? When we arrived on the ferry from Finland, the one factor the humorless Soviet border guards confiscated was a vinyl copy of Jesus Christ Superstar.

As Mimi held court docket on the Viru, my siblings and I headed out into town to search for fascinating stuff. I used to be already an audiophile, so I used to be keen to find the native high-end audio scene, if there was one. If there was, it was well-hidden—not for consumption by visiting Americans or, apparently, most people. There had been just a few exhausting (ie, Western) forex shops the place you might discover some Western mainstream electronics—extra what you would possibly discover at Crazy Eddie than at a high-end retailer like Lyric HiFi—promoting for about 10 occasions the New York City road worth. Loads of it, I’d heard, was bought abroad by Soviet Navy sailors to make some additional money after they returned dwelling. Few Estonians had entry to overseas forex, so this gear was out of their attain.

For common people, shopping for a hi-fi meant saving up for Soviet-bloc choices from manufacturers like Radiotehnika and Vega, churned out domestically for the plenty. Most of the bars on the town had been utilizing what seemed to be a unfastened knockoff of the Yamaha NS-1000 known as the Radiotehnika S-90, which, although the producer was based mostly in Latvia, apparently was made in Czechoslovakia. Today, the S-90 appears to have a little bit of a cult following—for instance, a small firm in Estonia will rebuild them to trendy aesthetic requirements (footnote 1). But whether or not this new enthusiasm is as a result of they had been genuinely good or simply resulting from nostalgia, I am unable to actually say.

Incidentally, Radiotehnika, which was based in 1927 as VEF Radiotehnika RRR, continues to be round, they usually nonetheless make a few fashions—the floorstanding SM-300 and S-400M—that intently resemble the S-90.

Anything extra unique than that was elusive, however what I later discovered that there was a vibrant underground audio scene, with gifted designers pulling no matter strings they might to design and produce high quality gear. One of the primary Soviet-made parts many thought-about excessive finish was an amplifier known as the Brig 001, designed by Anatoly Likhnitsky and Alla Kalyaeva within the mid-Nineteen Seventies. This was adopted by the wild-looking Corvette EP-003 turntable, with its distinctive chrome pool-ball tonearm bearing, and the Amfiton-U-002 amplifier, designed in 1983 by the late Vladimir Shushurin, who went on to grow to be Vladimir Lamm.

All this modified firstly of the Nineties, when the Soviet Union collapsed and the alternate of each concepts and items between East and West immediately turned a lot simpler. Some of the Eastern bloc’s extra gifted designers, together with Shushurin/Lamm and Victor Khomenko, who co-founded Balanced Audio Technology, had already managed to maneuver West earlier than the wall fell, however many extra might now achieve recognition past the Iron Curtain.

Fast ahead 32 years, and merchandise from former Eastern European nations like Slovenia, Serbia, Czech Republic, and Poland are broadly accessible worldwide. But high-end gear from the previous Soviet states stays much less frequent. The three Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania—are exceptions. They have despatched us some really severe high-end manufacturers, together with Estelon loudspeakers and Degritter document cleansing machines, each from Estonia, and Reed turntables and Audio Solutions loudspeakers from Lithuania. You can add Lithuania-made Aidas cartridges to that checklist.

Aidas
Aidas Svazas began repairing and modifying cartridges in Lithuania greater than 25 years in the past, creating his first fully new design, the AS-1, in 2010 (footnote 2). Like most smaller high-end cartridge producers, Aidas depends on tried-and-true elements from exterior suppliers like Namiki, Ogura, and Fritz Geiger. Much as loudspeaker producers use drivers constructed to their specs by Scan-Speak, SEAS, and so forth, Aidas makes use of Adamant Namiki of Japan to fabricate elements for his or her Mk2 mills to Aidas’s specs. Aidas cartridges are assembled at their facility in Kaunas, Lithuania.

Phono cartridge producers usually differentiate amongst their varied fashions based mostly on the stylus profile and cantilever materials. Aidas, although, makes use of the identical fundamental generator for nearly all their cartridges, all additionally fitted with the identical boron cantilever, AlNiCo5 magnet, and nude MicroLine stylus. What units the assorted fashions other than one another are what many would contemplate positive tuning: the fabric used for the cartridge physique and the wire used to wind the coils.

Aidas makes use of 4 sorts of wire of their coils, so the lineup is break up into 4 collection. The CU collection makes use of pure copper wire. The AG-CU collection steps that as much as silver-plated copper. The AU-CU collection makes use of gold-plated copper wire. Finally, there’s the AU Series, which makes use of wire made from pure gold.

Aidas is not the primary firm to make use of gold wire for his or her cartridge coils. Still, I’ve usually questioned about this utility, seeing as gold has each larger resistance and better mass than silver or copper. I requested Aidas’s Donatas Tamošiunas why they use gold. He mentioned that their gold wire has a barely extra clear but relaxed sound. He additionally mentioned that their gold wire is barely thicker than their copper and silver wire they usually use fewer activates the coil to compensate for these bodily and electrical disadvantages. That additionally signifies that AU-series fashions have a barely decrease output voltage.

The most visually hanging distinction amongst fashions is materials used to vogue the cartridge our bodies, which ranges from a number of kinds of layered wooden to a manufactured stone-and-resin composite known as Tru-Stone. Some Aidas cartridges even use ivory from historic woolly mammoth tusks. Where they discover woolly mammoth tusks, I could not let you know.

Pricing is set fully by the kind of coil wire used. CU-series fashions price $4595, each AG-CU– and AU-CU–collection fashions price $5850. AU-series fashions price $8650. In addition to those, Aidas makes two "child" cartridge fashions, which use a trimmed-down physique and lighter samarium-cobalt magnets to scale back mass, making them a greater match for sure tonearms.

Aidas despatched me two cartridges to audition for this column: the Durawood from the CU collection, which has a physique constituted of a multilayered wooden ($4595), and the Malachite Silver from the AG-CU collection, which has a inexperienced Tru-Stone physique. Both are visually hanging, displaying a home made, artisan aptitude. Having these two fashions readily available allowed me to match the adjustments wrought by the wire and physique variations, however solely cumulatively: I couldn’t differentiate between the results of the physique materials and the wiring. Jeff Fox of Aidas importer Notable Audio (footnote 3) says they plan to create a information outlining the sonic influence of the assorted physique supplies and wiring sorts, to offer at the least some steerage.

Footnote 1: See vaatcraft.com/s90

Footnote 2: See Michael Fremer’s tackle the Aidas Gala Gold LE in Analog Corner #335.

Footnote 3: Aidas Cartridges, Kaunas, Lithuania. Email: [email protected] Web: aidascartridges.com. US Distributor: Notable Audio Products, 115 Park Ave. Suite 2, Falls Church, VA 22046. Tel: (855) 966-8225. Email:[email protected] Web: notableaudio.com.

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January 24, 2024 at 06:21PM