Custom-Made Walnut Wood Body for Audio-Technica AT95 Cartridge

Custom-Made Walnut Wood Body for Audio-Technica AT95 Cartridge

A walnut wood body for the Audio-Technica AT95 cartridge brings a pleasing combination of warmth, natural timbre, and balanced detail to its already well-regarded sonic profile. The AT95 (and its variants like the AT95E and AT95EX) is known for its energetic, slightly bright character with good tracking and dynamics — and pairing it with walnut , a medium-density hardwood , helps to soften edges , add body , and improve tonal smoothness without overly damping the life out of it.

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🌰 What Walnut Brings to the Table:

• Density : Medium (~0.6–0.65 g/cm³), less than cocobolo or panzerholz but more than pine or balsa.

• Tone : Known for its neutral-warm, earthy sound in musical instruments.

• Damping : Moderate — absorbs resonances better than plastic but keeps a sense of liveliness.

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🔊 Sound Characteristics of Walnut Body for AT95:

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🎧 Subjective Listening Impressions:

• Removes digital glare or grain the AT95 can sometimes exhibit in stock form.

• Great synergy with acoustic music, vocals, jazz, and classic rock — adds realism and body.

• The presentation becomes more organic and listenable , especially on less-than-perfect records.

• Keeps the punch and rhythm the AT95 is known for, but rounds the sharp corners .

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🪵 Walnut vs Other Woods on AT95:

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✅ Best Use Case:

Choose a walnut body for AT95 if:

• You want a natural, easy-to-listen-to presentation .

• You listen to acoustic, vocal, jazz, folk, and classic analog records .

• Your setup leans slightly bright, and you want to add some warmth and flow .

• You want to upgrade without losing the musical liveliness of the AT95.

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🔧 Setup Tip :
Walnut is light enough that you probably won't exceed compliance/mass balance for most tonearms. Still, it adds a few grams over the plastic body, so it's worth recalculating your tonearm/cartridge resonance frequency (~8–12 Hz is ideal).