Elite Electronic Industries EEI 700 Classic nude parabolic (line contact) stylus, laminated pole pieces, boron cantilever, recommended tracking force 1.5-1.75g. 1984 Australian price AUD$139.95 (so quite an expensive cartridge), and included a number of refinements which were only included on the most expensive MM cartridges. This is the best cartridge of the lot, and was highly regarded.
Elite Electronic Industries (EEI) were an Australian electronics manufacturer from Melbourne, who designed and sold hi-fi amplifiers, as well as a range of parabolic styli, and some cartridges that they designed, and which were made to their designs by a Japanese OEM. Im not sure who the OEM who manufactured the styli and cartridges for them was, but it may have been someone like Nagaoka. They also had a stylus alignment gauge which was suitable for most cartridges, and which was sold with at least some of their cartridges (perhaps all of them), as well as separately for AUD$20 (1981 price).
Their CEO, engineer and cartridge designer was Peter Wright (no, not the infamous former MI5 spy and fellow Tasmanian resident, incidentally who wrote the book Spycatcher, that the government banned in England!). The styli were available for a range of cartridges including popular models from Ortofon, Shure and Stanton even some top-end models such as the Shure V15 Type III were covered.
Australian stylus re-tippers Garrott Brothers once had a very cheeky ad describing how a blind test by some reviewers found that their Weinz Paroc (parabolic) stylus re-tips sounded better than the parabolic replacements from a well-known brand. They didnt name EEI (they didnt want to get in legal trouble), but it was obvious thats who their blind test had been against, since they were the only company offering parabolic stylus replacements for a range of different brand cartridges in Australia at the time!
The EEI cartridges got good reviews, partly because of their (mainly) parabolic styli, and were exported to 23 different countries, including NZ, and England, where they were introduced by Aussie engineer Max Townshend when he discovered that they werent sold there. Hed previously been the NSW state distributor when he ran a hi-fi shop in Sydney, before he moved to England. Vinylengine wrongly think that Townshend manufactured them, because he included his name on the EEI cartridges he sold in England! EEI were best known in Australia and NZ, as youd expect. The cheapest EEI cartridge model (300) had a conical stylus, the next model up (400) had an elliptical, and all the rest had parabolic styli. There was even a low output MM model, the 747, which also had a boron cantilever and nude parabolic stylus.
