The Van Den Hul Colibri - XCW Cartridge is their top model, a custom hand-built phono cartridge featuring matched crystal copper coils with 0.30 or 0.38mV/channel output.
As a result of phono cartridge builder A.J. van den Hul’s continuous research into improving his phono cartridge designs our top model “The Colibri” has seen the light of day.
The Colibri is the improved successor to our Grasshopper “Beauty” series of phono cartridges where many building components have been removed in a highly successful quest to return to the plain essence of phono transduction.
The result is an unbelievably straightforward sounding “clean and open” design, in all its aspects bearing much resemblance to the “Colibri” named tropical bird’s swiftness, elegance, and beauty; Hence the cartridge’s name.
Compared to our GRASSHOPPER “BEAUTY” series the following differences stand out:
By minimizing and adapting the cartridge’s total magnetic circuit the related distortion and (Barkhausen) noise have undergone a considerable decrease. This opens up many subtle sound details that never have been heard before; Especially the decay of instrument sounds now stand out much more clearly in the music’s totality.
Due to the minimization of the cartridge’s total magnetic circuit, the cartridge’s mass has been reduced. Together with the possibility to tune the cartridge’s static compliance on special customer demand, it is now possible to use very light tonearms whilst maintaining a very good tracking ability.
By removing the frontpole is has been possible to apply an even shorter cantilever; This further improves the groove-modulation-transduction’s directness and accuracy. Due to the minimal magnetic design, the output voltage has been slightly reduced.
