Well, I went ahead and mounted my AT440MLa cartridge. It doesn't stand as tall as the AT331LC does, due to the fact that it was made for a half inch mount instead of a P mount. (the P mount adapter on the other cart adds heigth) It came with shorter interconnect wires which I used. I put it on the tonearm of my Marantz turntable without alignment. I used the old cart and shell as a measure to get it close. I put on a record and the radar light pops on.I turned down the separation pots. Now normally, at this point, one would adjust the carrier level pot to obtain the least amount of distortion, however, there wasn't any distortion or sandpaper scratching. So I adjusted the pot for the best tonal quality. If you turn it too high you lose the high end, so I turned it all the way up and backed down until I got a robust sounding signal. I then adjusted the separation pots in the normal fashion. I tracked the turntable at 1 1/2 grams, and this proved to be slightly too light and I had to increase it a quarter gram. Still it was better than the two grams I was using with the Trackmaster 8 (AT331LC).
After a channel check, and one in SQ mode, I put on a quadradisc. What I heard was surprising. The cymbals were clearer and the drums had a sharper attack. But it was a little shrill and there was a sibilance problem. I determined the sibilance problem to be due to excessive peakiness in the high end, and I supressed it with the treble control and the 10KHZ filters on my Sansui amplifiers. Still there was plenty of high end and it was good. I would rather supress the treble and have plenty of strong subcarrier for the demodulator than have an inferior demodulated difference signal. Supressing the treble got rid of the shrillness also, so now I was ready to enjoy CD-4 in all of it's intended splendor.
And it was quite good! I look forward to listening to more CD-4 records tonight "for the first time", for I have never heard them sound so good. The AT440MLa is a go for CD-4, and a good replacement for the Trackmaster 8. It costs about twice as much (about a hundred bucks) and the stylus is a good bit more expensive (around 80 bucks) than one for an AT331LC, but I believe you will find the improved performance to be well worth the extra price. The AT331LC is discontinued and so is it's stylus, making the move inevitable anyway. The AT440MLa is a new variant of a proven design, and it will hopefully be around for awhile.
Note, I have had to supress treble on my Pioneer DVD-A player for the same reason, so I will just not have to adjust the amplifiers as much now, as the ideal settings will be closer for each device. And I can't wait until the stylus gets broken in, and I get the alignment correctly done, it's sure to sound even better!
The Quadfather