If the Clab ET can’t match the rich hues and sheer body of cartridges like the Etna SL and Fuuga, nor is it harmonically or dimensionally bereft. It just leans its strengths in a different musical direction. It’s a difference perhaps best captured by a recording like Víkingur Ólafsson’s Debussy-Rameau (DGG 483 8283). Despite being a current, digital disc, this is one of the most evocative piano records available, with a real sense of the instrument’s weight, presence and complexity. The Clab might lack the almost preternatural dimensionality of the Etna on this recording, but it still manages a convincing sense of location and solidity. Its ability to capture Ólafsson’s weighting and placement of notes is uncanny, the length of those notes, the space between them and the action of the piano are all rendered with a remarkable and unforced clarity that adds to the natural sense of performance, instrumental presence and the acoustic within which it sits. The left hand/right hand balance has a new clarity, with the length and texture of bass notes reproduce with particularly clarity. This is not a leaner or stripped out tonal balance: it’s a closer perspective, more direct and immediate, with less reflected energy. You can argue over which is right, but both are, in their own way, equally convincing.
It’s this ability to see into complex recordings, conjuring their pattern and purpose that makes the CartridgeLab Ebony Titanium such an auspicious debut. Whether it is the way that it maintains the propulsive quality in the prolonged, rumbling timps that offer the musical foundation for Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony (the excellent Colin Davis/BSO re-issue on UMG/Decca) or the exacting separation and dynamic discrimination that adds so much clarity, impact and intent to the performance, the Clab’s ability to effortlessly untangle layers of interwoven musical threads is exceptional. You’ll hear it in the dynamic shifts and instrumental interplay on Chasing The Dragon’s wonderful, direct cut double LP, Vivaldi in London (VALDC017), you’ll hear it in the sudden clarity brought to an album like Wind And Wuthering (Genesis, Charisma CDS 4005). It’s this apparently unrestricted musical access, a quality that crosses genres and disregards both the scale and demands of the recording that have catapulted the Ebony Titanium straight into the closed ranks of the most desirable and sought after pick-ups available. Make no mistake, this cartridge is already a serious contender.
Already? In many ways this review is a first instalment, Book 1 in a two-book series. In my experience, a well matched (generally a dedicated) transformer brings body and substance to cartridge – at the cost of fine detail and resolution. Well, the Clab cartridge has detail and resolution, transparency and speed to burn. It also has a dedicated transformer, begging the question, what are the two capable of in tandem? Just how far can this cartridge take you? That’s Book 2 – and it’s going to have to wait for the arrival of a suitably excellent MM phono-stage. The search is underway…
