Product Description
The van den Hul Colibri Master Signature is the culmination of A.J. van den Hul’s 44 years of phono cartridge research and development. Due to a new magnetic structure, this is the highest output Colibri he has ever built. The motor mass is the same with the same amount of turns in the coils. This provides more output, more dynamics, better staging and 40db separation between channels. The cantilever is 4 mm a bit longer than the other Colibri models again for better dynamics and bass response. The higher output means the music comes out of an inky black background.
van den Hul XGW Colibri Signature Stradivarius Moving Coil Cartridge: A New Contender for State-of-the-Art
03-22-2018 | By Myles B. Astor | Issue 96
What differentiates state-of-the-art cartridges from the rest of the pack? Simple. State-of-the-art cartridges (or for that matter any audio component) establish performance benchmarks for other cartridges to meet. Take for the sake of argument assessing a cartridge’s performance on a scale of one to ten using criteria such as dynamics, soundstaging, timbre, linearity, transient attack, resolution, texture, low level resolution, dimensionality, frequency extension, etc. A state-of-the-art cartridge should score sevens or eights across the board with one or two nines thrown in for good measure. (Yes, I’m a tough judge, but one lesson that HP taught the best reviewers—not unlike ice skating or gymnastic judges—is to leave yourself wiggle room!) Essentially no weak points and a couple of groundbreaking areas. The bulk of the scores for next tier of cartridges might be fives and sixes with an occasional seven or four. Translation. An even sounding cartridge that gives a very good taste of what the top cartridges do. Cartridges further down on the list may display very definable shortcomings in one or two areas and rack up scores of four and fives. These cartridges would fall into the category of great bangs for the buck.
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Tracking Force between 1.35 – 1.50 grams
Anti-skating Force between 0.0 – .6 grams
Effective Arm Mass of 1.0 – 1.6 grams
Load Impedence: 50 ohms to 47K ohms
Optimal Loading: 50 ohms to 600 ohms
Output Level 1.1mV
