HE 2006

I walked into Music Direct's room and asked Bes Nievera, "What's new?"

"Funny you should ask, we just got the prototype for Mobile Fidelity's new cartridge!" MoFi's Byron Collett gave me the 411: The moving coil cartridge sports a carbon fiber body and outputs 0.24 mV. It weighs about 11 grams. Price is still to be determined. Oh yeah, and it was designed by Mr. Takeda, designer of the Miyabi Standard.

"Takeda-san is pretty enthused over the carbon fiber shell," Collett told me. "It makes an unbelievable difference in the life and noise floor of the cartridge. We expect this will be a future classic."

Sounds good to me—I mean literally: Mofi'stest pressing of Scott Hamilton and Gerry Mulligan was seductive in its jump and texture.