Ceramic Cartridge Equalization

Do i need to add riaa equalization to the radio s phono circuitry to make it sound right on 45rpm records.

Ceramic cartridge equalization. They had an almost perfect built in mechanical equalization and all that an engineer had to do was to feed the signal to the grid of a valve triode and it would sing like a canary. Records have always sounded harsh in the treble very tinny. If the cartridge manufacturer does not mention this parameter then the only other option is to measure it using a meter to get a rough estimate. Then in 1946 a new type of ceramic cartridge appeared with the big bad sonotone and ever since then the industry utilised modern ceramic titanates to produce the.

Ceramic cartridge preamp circuit the revitalizer. This ceramic cartridge preamplifier circuit is one of the simplest utilising the least number of discrete components for producing riaa equalization. However you will need to make an attenuator. I suppose everyone might be thinking how to use this cheap cartridge hence this page might help.

Equalization of ceramic cartridges only require a small amount of equalization which is generally handled by mechanical means magnetic cartridges on the other hand require massive amounts of equalization. The decca deram ceramic cartridge was one popular example. A ceramic phonograph pickup is capacitive and its high impedance susceptible to loading hence this low cost and simple one transistor circuit is specially designed for cartridges with capacitance. The purposes of the equalization are to permit greater recording times by decreasing the mean width of each groove to improve sound quality and to reduce the groove damage that would otherwise arise during playback.

In this ceramic cartridge preamp circuit we are able to set the precise equalization required for any cartridge by calculating the required value of r1 from the cartridge capacitance. Such cartridges which have mostly occupied the cheaper end of the market and used either piezoelectric crystal or electrostrictive ceramic generators require different milder replay equalization to account for the differences between the riaa record characteristic and a. Riaa equalization is a specification for the recording and playback of phonograph records established by the recording industry association of america riaa. I felt it was better to do it this way as it does not require an oscilloscope and specialized equipment.

In any case if your ceramic cartridge doesn t include the required mechanical equalization the result would sound lacking in highs not the.