Van Den Hul Cables

The physicist who redesigned the stylus

A.J. van den Hul is a rare figure in audio: someone whose work changed a category and is credited by name for it. Aalt Jouke van den Hul taught physics at Delft University of Technology, and the stylus profile that carries his name came out of extended computer analysis carried out there in the 1970s. The insight was to shape the playback stylus to imitate the cutter stylus that made the groove in the first place, which puts far more of the diamond in contact with the groove wall than a conventional elliptical, reducing wear and retrieving more of what was cut into the record. Goldring were the first to adopt it, and it is now used under licence and in variation by cartridge makers across the industry.

The company he founded in the Netherlands in 1980 does two things that rarely sit together. It builds cartridges by hand, at every level from accessible to reference, with the Colibri and Frog among the best regarded moving coils made. And it makes cables, using conductor materials including Linear Structured Carbon that behave differently from metal.

That combination gives the range an unusual coherence for anyone building an analogue front end, since the cartridge, the tonearm cable and the interconnect can all come from the same source and the same design thinking.

Van den Hul also retip and rebuild cartridges from other makers, which is worth knowing if you own something valuable that needs attention.