I think it's a pretty safe bet to say that no one here at AR had either ever heard, or even heard of this cartridge until I posted (on quite a few occasions) that it's the cartridge I'm currently using in my system. And that's a shame. It's far and away the best sounding cartridge Stanton ever made.

Also known as the "WOS 100" ("WOS" standing for "Walter O. Stanton"), the cartridge has its beginnings in the legendary Pickering XSV-3000, introduced all the way back in 1976. At that time, most people were startled to hear just how good the 3000 was, and even asked, "Who really makes this cartridge?" believing Pickering incapable of making anything so good. One such "non-believer" was Saul Marantz, to whom I gave a 3000 to use at a consumer audio show while I was PIckering's National Sales Manager.. He was reluctant to use it at first, but after installing it into the turntable he and Jon Dahlquist were using, Saul came over to the Pickering booth and proclaimed the cartridge the best sounding moving magnet cartridge he'd ever heard.

As design improvements were incorporated into the 3000, the Stanton 881-S was born. While the 881-S was slightly better than the original 3000, those changes silently went into production 3000's at the time, so that the two cartridges were in fact, identical (this was typical at the time with Pickering and Stanton, and actually a rather clever marketing ploy.)

Over the years the design (using samarium cobalt as the magnetic material) and a stylus that had more than 12 patents on its internal design and construction, eventually evolved into the WOS 100. In addition to the company's proprietary "Stereohedron" stylus shape (a variation of the Shibata-type), a super-thin, sapphire-coated beryllium cantilever was fitted with a "nude" variant of that Stereohedron stylus. The WOS-100, aside from the customary "Calibration" that all Stantons came with, also came with individually-run frequency response charts. Of course, it also had to be packaged well, and the solid walnut box it came in was something to behold too.

Glamour and glitz aside, the WOS 100 sounds just plain wonderful. It hasn't been manufactured now for about 10 years, and, despite glowing reviews and huge sales success in Europe, suffered from a genuinely vile and needlessly insulting review in "The Absolute Sound" from a young a**wipe who, by his own admission, never liked Stanton cartridges in the first place. (I believe I've written a thread about this entire ordeal before - it's too long to go into here, but if anyone's interested, send me a PM and I'll give you all the "gory details" about the truly fraudulent and misleading efforts of TAS in this matter.) Sales were quite modest prior to that review, and all but collapsed afterwards.

I also own a Shure V/15 Type V MXR, which is a highly-touted MM cartridge. Just a few days ago, I decided to fool around with my turntable setup, and to check the cartridge aligntment. To my horror, I discovered it was way off, and corrected it. I also did the same with the Shure, which I had mounted in an additional headshell. Then I did a comparison.

I used my wife again (who usually thinks I"m nuts whenever I ask her to see if she can hear a difference between anything) as my "audience." I played a favorite track on a Sheffield direct to disc recording of Dave Gruisin, and listened to all of it. It sounded clear, distinct and pleasant.

Then I switched cartridges, without telling my wife which was which. As soon as the first note of the track was heard, there was an immediate difference, and as the music continued, there was no question that the second cartridge was far and away the better of the two: much, much more distinct, brilliant and "alive" sounding, without a deliberate peak in the high end, and a good deal more "bite" to the initial attacks of many instruments. ALL frequencies seemed to be reproduced better, with more "sparkle" to the highs, "presence" to the mids, and "guts" and "impact" to the bottom. These are all my adjectives: my wife simply said, "that one's much better."

And, of course, "that" cartridge was the Collector's Series 100.

I guess I went through this exercise to convince myself that I'm using a cartridge that's still as good as many others of today, other than taking that giant leap into the multi-thousand dollar area for top end moving coil models and their associated step up transformers. While Walter Stanton believed to his dying day that NO moving coil cartridge could ever be any good, none of us in the sales department ever agreed with him, and for the sake of our careers, wouldn't dare admit that either. Still, some of the company's products (both Pickering and Stanton) were really first-rate performers, with the WOS-100 firmly planted at the top of the heap.

Stanton today is primiarily a DJ-oriented company, having been sold to a new owner in 1999, and with a new CEO heading up what's now called "The Stanton Group." Going gun-ho into the DJ marketplace made sense for the company, and I fully support its efforts. Still, if not only for the sake of nostalgia, it's a crying shame that a product like the Collector's Series 100 can no longer be had from them.