Cardas Myrtle Silver Heart

As promised, I'm posting a pic of the Cardas Myrtle Silver Heart cartridge to show that Cardas Audio does more than make great cables. Here's a description from their website:

"The Cardas Myrtle Silver Heart body is made from America's most beautiful hardwood, the legendary Myrtle tree. Rarest of all woods, this symmetrical, broadleaf, evergreen Myrtle grows only in Southwestern Oregon (Coos and Curry counties) and the Biblical Holy Lands. Myrtlewood has a very complex grain structure. The coloring of the wood is unique, varying from a sedate, satiny gray to riotously, multicolored grains of red, yellow, and brown, with many burls and shapes in its grain. Denser than Oak, unseasoned Myrtle logs will not float."

I heard an earlier Cardas cartridge, the Heart, some years ago and it definitely qualified as one of the world's finest. I'm a huge fan of wooden-bodied cartridges, having owned a Koetsu Rosewood for seven years. Wooden-bodied cartridges tend to sound warmer and more romantic than cartridges made out of plastic or metal.

In fact, Cardas cartridges were (or still are) the preferred cartridges for the amazing SPJ turntables that I wrote about several years ago for Perfect Sound Forever. (You can read it here: http://www.furious.com/perfect/vinyl26.html.) After I wrote that article and praised SPJ designer Judy Spotheim-Koreneef, we wound up exchanging quite a few emails. She wound up linking my article to her website, where it still remains after almost 10 years. I can remember the fond words she had for George Cardas and his cartridges.

George Cardas owns one of the SPJ 'tables, and there's a great video on YouTube of him playing his system at home: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCFhBmy6XFQ. As you can imagine, he has a pretty amazing system that includes Rowland Research and Wavestream amplification and vintage Magnepan Tympani speakers.

As you have probably already guessed, I'm quickly becoming a Cardas convert!