Sumiko Pearwood Celebration II operation manual
OWNER’S MANUAL
Pearwood
Celebration II
LOW OUTPUT MOVING COIL CARTRIDGE
Dear New Pearwood Celebration II Owner,
Thank you for your purchase of our new moving coil cartridge. Our intention in producing
the Celebration II is simple and unequivocal: to deliver the highest level of real world
performance to the vinyl lover. The Celebration II is the result of our over thirty years of
service to the analog devotee; music lovers who value the expressiveness and emotional
authenticity available only from analog records. There is also a populist sentiment in our
decision to produce a genuine reference quality cartridge with more than sufcient output
to drive normal moving coil phono sections. We wanted real people, music lovers like you
and us, to be able to enjoy the greatness contained within your record collections. And we
wanted you to have enough money left over to be able to buy more vinyl records. Good
luck and good listening.
In the next few pages, we will take you on a tour of the design choices we made during the
development of the Celebration II. The second half of the manual is intended to provide you
with simple, visual clues to get the most music from your new Celebration II.
Enjoy the Music and Celebrate!
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Design Overview .............................................................................................................. 4
Design Specics ............................................................................................................... 5
Before You Begin Setting Up the Cartridge ...................................................................... 6
Basic Mounting Instructions.............................................................................................. 12
VTA Adjustment ................................................................................................................ 21
Azimuth Adjustment .......................................................................................................... 26
Wrapping Up the Installation ............................................................................................ 32
Warranty ........................................................................................................................... 33
Celebration II Specications ............................................................................................. 36
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DESIGN OVERVIEW
Why a low output moving coil cartridge?
Along the conceptual path, we examined closely the possibility of several construction
methods. Moving magnet, or moving iron cartridges were rejected for their inability to
deliver the high resolution and emotional intimacy possible only through the reduced
moving mass of the better moving coil designs. Conventional, very-low output moving
coils, while theoretically offering the lowest moving mass and generator impedance, were
generally found to require too much from the phono section in terms of performance.
We found that while the theoretical performance envelope was very high indeed, the
delivered sound quality in real world systems rarely reached the intended performance
goal. By using a higher than usual output (0.5mV) in the Celebration II, the phono
section is not tasked with the accessing the nether regions of the unit’s gain limits. Radio
frequency interference (RFI) and circuit noise oor are less impactful on the sound,
resulting in wider dynamics and a quieter background. Additionally, bass response is
rich, extended and complete.
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DESIGN SPECIFICS
In the eld of moving coil design, controlling the magnetic eld within the generator
is of paramount importance. Non-linear magnets, poor physical construction, poor
magnetic saturation of the yokes, and poorly held tolerances can all be sources of an
uncontrollable and non-linear magnetic eld. A non-linear magnetic eld means non-
linear sound, resulting in sound that can range from bright and sterile to dull and boring. In
the new Celebration II, we’ve chosen an expensive Alnico magnet for it’s pure saturation
qualities. This quality helps provide the Celebration II with a very solid brass foundation
and very wide dynamics. But, not stopping there, the front yoke of the generator is high-
pressure t against the Alnico magnet, ensuring a linear magnetic density, giving you,
the listener, a vast open soundstage, a natural and pure midrange, and high frequencies
that are extended but never bright.
We specied a long grain boron cantilever for the Celebration II, which provides
excellent energy transfer from the stylus to the coils. There is, among some factions of
audiophiles, a misconception that boron cantilevers produce a somewhat sterile sound
quality. Nothing could be further from the truth. However, the choice of a still cantilever
necessitated excellence within the suspension design of the cartridge.
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DESIGN SPECIFICS, continued
Suspension Design
Virtually all conventional moving coils get by with a suspension element made from a
butyl material. For the Celebration II, we choose to use a synthetic rubber where the
hardness (10 degrees) and repulsion factor (8%) of the material can be tightly controlled
with molding temperature, cure time and skin tension. Additionally, with this synthetic
material, the specied parameters of the cartridge will perform as designed for a longer
period of time, and will last considerably longer than other designs. The nal result
provides a combination of superior dynamics and excellent ling term tracking ability.
Why an Elliptical Stylus Shape?
Your Celebration II is tted with an elliptically ground, low mass PH stylus. No more
expensive stylus is available. PH styli cost roughly ve times more than the next most
expensive grade available. The precision polish and clarity of the PH diamond is
legendary within cartridge design circles, lending sweetness to the sound unavailable
at lower cost. Our decision to produce an elliptical grind is based on the belief that
musicality is a prime virtue. While it is possible to produce specialty grinds (Microridge,
van den Hul, etc.) which offers theoretical benets, our eld experience suggests only
a tiny fraction of owners are trained in setting up these alternative designs with enough
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DESIGN SPECIFICS, continued
precision to access the positive virtues of the design. (It takes years of shop time to
learn these skills.) The remaining 99% of the specialty grind owners are condemned
to listening to cartridges performing well below their potential. Additionally, if set up
incorrectly, these stylus types can damage records, and will wear out prematurely.
By selecting our elliptical stylus, we offer a design type where the inherent character is
always musical. Like exotic stylus grinds, with care and precise adjustment, tremendous
amounts of detail can be extracted from the Celebration II. But unlike those grinds, even
if it is not adjusted within a gnat’s whisker of perfection, your cartridge will still deliver an
intensely musical experience.
Old World Craftsmanship
Each Celebration II is painstakingly crafted by hand in a process that involves hours
of labor. After assembly, nal adjustments are made using a battery of test records,
and performance is hand-calibrated. Each cartridge is subjected to this process and
is critically auditioned before it is shipped. No computer or machine is yet capable of
matching the precise adjustments necessary to extract the highest level of performance
from a reference quality phono cartridge.
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DESIGN SPECIFICS, continued
The Point of the Exercise
The purpose of ne adjustment of a phono cartridge is simple: you are trying to optimally
align the playing surface of the stylus with the groove wall in the record, doing so in a
way that the stylus is securely seated against the groove wall with neither too much or
too little force, in all directions. All of these adjustments would be child’s play if the stylus
was the size of a baseball, and the groove was the size of a rain gutter.
The tricky part comes in the fact that the stylus is so tiny that no one can possibly see the
scanning surface of the stylus (the part that actually touches the record groove) without
the aid of a microscope. Add the fact that the stylus is moving at the equivalent of about
three hundred miles per hour and is being asked to maneuver faster than a Formula
One race car and the problem becomes quite complex. Luckily, with a little patience and
training, there is a grand equalizer: your ears.
So, let’s get to it!
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BEFORE YOU BEGIN SETTING UP THE CARTRIDGE
Preliminary User Note:
Before we begin, it might prove helpful to obtain an overview of correct set-up, why you
are doing it, and what you hope to accomplish. This is not intended as a theoretical
treatise, but merely as good, simple, practical tips on how to go about getting the most
from your Celebration II.
WARNING: Phono cartridges are inherently delicate things. Work SLOWLY, and in a
methodical fashion with lots of light and enough space to work comfortably. Rushing
to make an adjustment is likely to have the unhappy result of, at best, performing a
lousy adjustment, or at worst, damaging the cartridge. Don’t forget the wisdom in the old
adage, “There never seems enough time to perform a task properly the rst time, but
there is always enough time to do it again”.
Slow down and enjoy the process!
All the adjustments we speak of in the following pages are small incremental adjustments.
As a general frame of reference, virtually any change you make will be less than oneeighth of an inch. Some, such as vertical tracking angle adjustments may end up being
a few thousandths of an inch!
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BEFORE YOU BEGIN SETTING UP THE CARTRIDGE, continued
The Line Drawings
As the saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” so we chose to add some
simple illustrations to the manual. The line drawings included in this manual are there
for you as a guide, illustrating what your cartridge will look like when both properly and
improperly mounted and adjusted in your tonearm. Although there is no way to show you
exactly what a perfectly adjusted cartridge will look like in a tonearm, the line drawings
can serve to give you a mental template for your particular set-up. Found on pages 19
and 24, these line drawings will illustrate gross problems found in VTA and Azimuth
adjustments. Directly after the text on adjusting VTA and Azimuth, the illustrations
on page 26 will allow you to see what your cartridge should generally look like when
properly set-up.
For instance, if your particular cartridge sounds best with a more exaggerated negative
rake, so be it. If the visual aspect of your particular cartridge looks as if the azimuth is
tilted very slightly to one side, but this is the attitude that allows for the best sound, this
too is okay. So use this guide as just that, a guide. Explore the possibilities of what you
can extract from your cartridge, and you will be rewarded with great music.
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