Phono Cartridge Reviews

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Phono Cartridge Reviews
Transfiguration Proteus MC phono cartridge
Michael Fremer  |  Oct 08, 2014  |  4 comments
I've lost track of how many Transfiguration cartridges I've reviewed over the years. In all that time I've never met their designer, Immutable Music's Seiji Yoshioka, but every year he sends me an exceptionally tasteful holiday greeting card. I've never reciprocated. The truth isn't always pretty.

The Transfiguration cartridges I've reviewed, too, have always conveyed a midrange musical truth that hasn't been flashy or pretty. But it's always been honest and convincing, particularly of the reality of voices. If you said that the Transfigurations lacked character, you wouldn't be wrong—unless you intended it as a criticism.

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Audacious AudioPhono Cartridge Reviews
Lyra Etna MC phono cartridge
Michael Fremer  |  Mar 05, 2014  |  2 comments
Is the high-performance audio industry stagnating? Are designers simply repackaging the past? Cynics claim so, but to me it seems that making that case gets harder by the day, as a parade of veterans continue to produce their best work.
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Phono Cartridge ReviewsPhono Accessory ReviewsThe Entry Level
The Entry Level #23
Stephen Mejias  |  Nov 08, 2012  |  6 comments
It was around 7pm on Tuesday evening when I bumped into Nicole and Ms. Little on Newark Avenue, in downtown Jersey City. The girls were on their way to Kristen's shop, Kanibal Home, for their weekly book-club meeting. (Or was it Writing Club? Knitting? Screen printing? Butterfly pinning? I can never keep track.) I was on my way home, not to read, write, or listen to music, but . . .

"Hi, honey," Ms. Little said. "Going home to play with your cartridge?"

I made a face, nodded, sighed. Sensing some sharp-witted remark forming in Nicole's filthy mind, I beat her to the punch: "Yup, that's what I call it."

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Audacious AudioPhono Cartridge Reviews
Lyra Atlas MC phono cartridge
Michael Fremer  |  Feb 14, 2013  |  First Published: May 01, 2012  |  5 comments
At the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, I spoke with Lyra's Jonathan Carr about the Atlas. He told me that, rather than having started as a blank sheet of paper, the Atlas is an outgrowth of the Kleos ($2995), which I reviewed in January 2011, when I thought it Carr's best balanced design yet, even if it didn't have quite the resolution of the Titan i. Like the lower-priced Delos ($1650, reviewed in August 2010), the Kleos included Carr's New Angle technology, which mechanically aligns the coils to be perfectly positioned relative to the front and rear magnets when the stylus is in the groove.
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Art Dudley ListeningIntegrated Amp ReviewsPhono Cartridge Reviews
Listening #110
Art Dudley  |  Feb 21, 2012  |  1 comments
Phono cartridges—along with mothballs, hobnails, laundry bluing, hot-water bottles, lighter fluid, fur coats, and typewriters—are among the most outdated of consumer goods: To most people who make their living in the world of consumer electronics, every new cartridge that hits the shelves is little more than a coughing spasm from the death-room down the hall. You can imagine, then, the welcome accorded new samples of the even more anachronistic pickup head, which combines phono cartridge, headshell, and barbell into a product one seldom sees outside the school librarian's junk drawer. New pickup heads, which tend to look the same as old pickup heads, are manufactured in pessimistically small quantities, and seldom get much attention.
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Art Dudley ListeningTurntable ReviewsPhono Cartridge Reviews
Listening #108
Art Dudley  |  Dec 15, 2011  |  1 comments
I set out on a fishing trip but returned less than an hour later, empty-handed. You asked me, reasonably enough, "What happened?"

"I spent a half-hour digging in the garden for worms, but couldn't find any."

"You could have driven to Mr. Zetterstrum's farm, knocked on his door, asked his permission, and spent a few hours overturning the cowflops in his pasture. I'm sure you would have found one or two worms that way."

"You're right. I guess I didn't want to go fishing that badly."

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Phono Cartridge Reviews
Brinkmann Pi phono cartridge
Michael Fremer  |  May 24, 2011  |  0 comments
The Brinkmann Pi cartridge's Benz-Micro heritage was obvious from the get-go. The motor is built to Brinkmann's specifications by Benz-Micro and includes a Micro-Ridge stylus. The cantilever material is not specified. The Pi's output is approximately 0.25mV, and its compliance is moderate at 15µm/mN. Recommended are a tracking force of 1.8–2gm, a VTA of 23°, and a resistive load of 600 ohms.

Helmut Brinkmann says he tweaked the Pi's design for a year and a half before he achieved the results he desired, including making the tiny set screws out of various materials. The Pi, with a body of machined aluminum designed to control the dissipation of resonant energy, weighs a hefty 14gm. Brinkmann supplies aluminum screws and titanium washers, which, he claims, in combination with special damping between the cartridge body and headshell, have been "sonically tuned to create a unique musical instrument."

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Phono Cartridge Reviews
Soundsmith Strain Gauge SG-200 phono cartridge system
Michael Fremer  |  Mar 22, 2011  |  0 comments
Strain-gauge phono cartridges are rarely made and seldom heard; for most vinyl fans, they are more myth than fact. Panasonic once made one, as did Sao Win, but those were decades ago. I've heard about those two models for years but have never seen, much less heard one.

As if he's not got enough to do building his extensive lines of moving-iron cartridges, preamplifiers, amplifiers, and speakers, Soundsmith's Peter Ledermann also makes a full line of strain-gauge cartridge systems available with a choice of six user-replaceable stylus profiles. I believe the Soundsmith is the only strain-gauge cartridge currently made anywhere in the world. Ledermann says it takes him a full day to build one.

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Phono Cartridge Reviews
Miyajima Shilabe phono cartridge
Art Dudley, Michael Fremer  |  Oct 28, 2010  |  First Published: Sep 28, 2009  |  0 comments
The unusual Miyajima Shilabe moving-coil cartridge ($2800) came to my attention through a friend, and I obtained one from the importer, Robin Wyatt of Robyatt Audio, a music lover and dedicated audiophile who imports gear as a sideline, and who lives nearby in New Jersey.
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Budget Component ReviewsPhono Cartridge Reviews
Grado Prestige Gold1 phono cartridge
Art Dudley  |  Jul 13, 2009  |  5 comments
In the early to mid-1980s, I read every high-end hi-fi magazine I could get my hands on. Among the consequences was my discovery that the Grado Signature Seven phono cartridge—which was better and cheaper than the Signatures One through Six—was the cartridge that God wanted me to have. So I cut back on all manner of luxuries, saved every dollar I could save, and a few months later brought a walletful of cash to Harvey Sound in midtown Manhattan, where an unpleasant man with a bad comb-over handed me a little pill bottle of a plastic tube.
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Art Dudley ListeningPhono Cartridge Reviews
Listening #76
Art Dudley  |  Apr 26, 2009  |  1 comments
"Glory to the genius of Edison!"—Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
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Art Dudley ListeningPhono Cartridge Reviews
Listening #72
Art Dudley  |  Dec 28, 2008  |  0 comments
I'm old enough to remember when "Made in Japan" was an insult. As a child, I saw that phrase on only the cheapest or craziest toys—some stamped out of tin and cupped together by a tab with a fiendish edge, some molded from a distinctively smooth, brittle plastic. The latter included a wind-up bunny on wheels that my father brought home one day: my favorite toy, ever. (It came with a double-barreled dart gun that I seldom used, partly because I loved the bunny too much to shoot it, and partly because the suction-cup darts didn't stick to that kind of plastic in the first place.)
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Art Dudley ListeningPhono Cartridge Reviews
Listening #69
Art Dudley  |  Sep 22, 2008  |  0 comments
Janet watched the record spin wildly, mildly awestruck. She nodded its way—a gesture that took in all the other 78rpm discs piled nearby—and asked, "How long have you had those?"
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Budget Component ReviewsPhono Cartridge Reviews
Ortofon Rondo Bronze MC phono cartridge
Art Dudley  |  May 12, 2008  |  0 comments
An enduringly healthy phono-cartridge industry? After a quarter of a century of rushing right out to buy the latest digital music appliances? You bet.
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Budget Component ReviewsPhono Cartridge Reviews
Soundsmith SMMC1 moving-iron phono cartridge
Michael Fremer  |  Apr 25, 2008  |  0 comments
The audio industry may have lost a legend and a prolific innovator in Henry Kloss a few years back, but it still has another affable, creative eccentric in Peter Ledermann. In the mid-1970s, Ledermann was director of engineering at Bozak, where, with Rudy Bozak, he helped develop a miniature bookshelf speaker and a miniature powered subwoofer. Before that, Ledermann was a design engineer at RAM Audio Systems, working with Richard Majestic on the designs of everything from high-power, minimal-feedback power amplifiers and preamplifiers to phono cartridge systems. He was also an award-winning senior research engineer at IBM, and the primary inventor of 11 IBM patents.
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