Phono Cartridge Reviews

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Analog CornerPhono Cartridge ReviewsPhono Preamp Reviews
Analog Corner #306: Phasemation, DS Audio, Audio Research, Clarus
Michael Fremer  |  Jan 19, 2021  | 
I feel compelled to repeat here an eerie occurrence I related a while back on AnalogPlanet. I reviewed, in the February 1999 Analog Corner column, the Cartridge Man's Digital Stylus Force Gauge, which back then sold for $299.

I still have it, but a decade ago, the battery stopped taking a charge. I put it aside, planning to replace the battery someday.

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Gramophone DreamsPhono Cartridge Reviews
Gramophone Dreams #44: Audio-Technica, Goldring, LP Gear phono cartridges
Herb Reichert  |  Dec 28, 2020  | 
Someone once asked me, "If I buy your $90,000, 25W amplifier, what will I get that I am not getting with my $2000, 200W amplifier?" My answer was simple: "Goosebumps, tears, and smirking." Great, well-tuned audio systems, at all price levels, give their owners less of the annoying and distracting stuff and more of the exciting and engaging stuff. Great systems offer more opportunities for smirking pridefully while listening to great recordings.
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Analog CornerPhono Accessory ReviewsPhono Cartridge Reviews
Analog Corner # 305: Degritter record cleaner & Aidas Gala Gold LE cartridge
Michael Fremer  |  Dec 21, 2020  | 
Cavitation revolutionized record cleaning more than a decade ago, when Reiner Gläss's Audiodesksysteme introduced its original fully automatic machine. Mr. Gläss's innovative machine, which automatically spun the record in ultrasonically cavitated water, then dried it with fans, at first was plagued with reliability issues, and because it is sealed, it was not easy to repair.
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Analog CornerPhono Accessory ReviewsPhono Cartridge Reviews
Analog Corner #301: WallyTractor, StylusTimer, Fuuga, Tzar DST
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 19, 2020  | 
How goes your quarantining? Honestly, my life hasn't changed much here. I'm locked in the basement as usual, happy to have a good audio system and overwhelmed by my musical choices. Other than minimizing shopping expeditions and wearing a mask, the biggest change in my life is a spike in requests from readers for upgrade advice. I've never been so busy answering reader emails.
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Analog CornerPhono Accessory ReviewsPhono Cartridge Reviews
Analog Corner #299: Haniwa HCVC01, CAD Ground Control, DS Audio Vinyl Ionizer-001
Michael Fremer  |  Aug 04, 2020  |  First Published: Jul 01, 2020  | 
Lately, current amplification–based moving-coil phono preamplifiers have gotten a great deal of well-deserved press. For years, Haniwa's Dr. Kubo has been designing and selling super–low-internal-impedance cartridges because such cartridges work best with such devices. He has also been designing and selling his own current-amplification phono preamplifier.
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Gramophone DreamsPhono Cartridge ReviewsTurntable Reviews
Gramophone Dreams #37: JSikora Initial turntable & Grado Aeon3 phono cartridge
Herb Reichert  |  Jun 02, 2020  | 
My most cherished intangibles—love, beauty, glimpses of higher realms—enter my awareness only after I prepare my psyche to receive them. Extended bathing, lighting candles, making tea, and preparing food are ritual work forms that prepare my senses to accept both pleasure and illumination. In like manner, collecting LPs and storing them properly, setting up turntables, aligning cartridges, and cleaning styli are ritual actions that prepare me for the high moments of focused musical pleasure only a black disc can provide.
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Analog CornerPhono Cartridge Reviews
Analog Corner #296: Grado Epoch3, Lyra Atlas Lambda SL, Ortofon MC A Mono phono cartridges
Michael Fremer  |  Sep 07, 2020  |  First Published: Apr 01, 2020  | 
We're 30 years into a cartridge design revolution, particularly at the top end of the market, where manufacturers charge upward of $10,000 for their best efforts: prices that well-off consumers have amply proved they are willing to pay. There doesn't seem to be an innovation end in sight.
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Analog CornerPhono Cartridge ReviewsTonearm ReviewsTurntable Reviews
Analog Corner #295: Rega Planar 10 turntable, RB3000 tonearm, Apheta 3 phono cartridge
Michael Fremer  |  Feb 18, 2020  |  First Published: Mar 01, 2020  | 
Lately it seems that the more Rega charges for one of its turntables, the less you get—and from Rega's performance perspective that's a good thing.

While some turntable designs pile on the mass, hoping to tame resonances and better isolate the record from the outside world, Rega has long advocated ultralow-mass designs. What's up with that?

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Analog CornerPhono Cartridge ReviewsPhono Preamp ReviewsTurntable Reviews
Analog Corner #292: AVM R 2.3 turntable, Miyajima Destiny phono cartridge, Sutherland Phono Loco phono preamplifier
Michael Fremer  |  Nov 09, 2020  |  First Published: Dec 01, 2019  | 
AVM Audio, which has been in business since 1986 (footnote 1), chose last year to enter the turntable market with two models that reflect the company's brushed-aluminum/blue LED visual aesthetics.

It doesn't take a forensic turntable scientist to figure out who manufactures both of those turntable models. Clearly, Pro-Ject does (footnote 2)—although some audiophiles might recognize only a few key parts. Other elements, especially the two different tonearm models, may appear unique to AVM, having been built to their specs.

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Art Dudley ListeningPhono Cartridge Reviews
Listening #202: Altec 604 & Audio MusiKraft Denon DL-103
Art Dudley  |  Oct 02, 2019  | 
Godzilla and I are precisely the same age: We were both born in 1954, Godzilla as an expression of the postwar fears of a nation uniquely aware of the horrors of nuclear armaments, I as an expression of the postwar comfort felt by an American veteran fresh from foreign wars. We both dislike being awakened from our slumber, and we're both unusually handsome.
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Analog CornerPhono Cartridge ReviewsPhono Preamp ReviewsTurntable Reviews
Analog Corner #290: The Haniwa LP Playback System
Michael Fremer  |  Jan 05, 2021  |  First Published: Oct 01, 2019  | 
Haniwa's Dr. Tetsuo Kubo is an interesting fellow. If you go to shows, domestic or overseas, you've possibly encountered him in his room a space known for being strewn, shrine-like, with LPs that once belonged to The Absolute Sound's founder, the late Harry Pearson: Dr. Kubo was a fan.
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Analog CornerPhono Cartridge Reviews
Analog Corner #289: Ortofon Anna Diamond MC phono cartridge
Michael Fremer  |  Feb 01, 2021  |  First Published: Sep 01, 2019  | 
As I was doing a final edit on this column, I received very sad news from Leif Johannsen, the chief officer of acoustics and technology for cartridge manufacturer Ortofon A/S: Kim Petersen, described by Johannsen as his "right hand and new cartridge design and listening partner" and the company's "top cartridge expert," passed away suddenly at age 52.
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Gramophone DreamsPhono Cartridge Reviews
Gramophone Dreams #29: Etsuro Urushi & Hana phono cartridges
Herb Reichert  |  Jul 30, 2019  | 
We were playing some old, cherished black discs when my partner, bb (the 6'-tall Aries artist), declared, "With records you hear touch, and you are not alone." Long pause. "Just holding the cover brings back memories—that's their humanity."
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Art Dudley ListeningPhono Cartridge ReviewsTube Power Amp Reviews
Listening #200: Tzar DST1 & Shindo Montille CV 391
Art Dudley  |  Jul 25, 2019  | 
Products come and go. Some impress more than others, and in our little world, the ones that impress the most wind up in Class A of our semiannual "Recommended Components" feature.

After a product makes it to that list, if Stereophile's reviewers go more than a few years without hearing it again—in a home system or a dealer's showroom or even at an audio show—that product falls off the list, usually quietly. Thus, if a reviewer is maximally knocked out by a piece of playback gear, yet the fates allow neither a purchase nor an extended loan, he or she or someone else on staff must endeavor to borrow it again so it can stay recommended.

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Analog CornerPhono Cartridge ReviewsTonearm Reviews
Analog Corner #285: Top Wing Suzaku, HiFiction Thales, Analysis Plus
Michael Fremer  |  Mar 09, 2021  |  First Published: May 01, 2019  | 
For a phono cartridge to generate current and voltage, something must move: a coil of wire (as in a moving-coil cartridge), or a magnet (as in a moving-magnet type), or a tiny piece of iron (a moving-iron type). In those rare cartridges that depart from the electricity-generating principle of the ones described above, it can be a displacement-measuring device in which a moving shutter modulates a light source to vary a supplied voltage (as in an optical cartridge), or one in which voltage is modulated when a tiny chip of silicon crystal is squeezed by a moving element, which varies the chip's electrical resistance (as in a strain-gauge cartridge). But regardless of what it is that moves in a cartridge, something has to.
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