It may be that I own very few mono LPs that are old enough to require 1.0mil.
The 1.0 mil for the early monos assumes a conical profile and many of the advanced profiles play the early mono's perfectly.
dave
Mono Cartridge Question
You chaps have watched me struggle with the issue of my London Decca Reference being irreplaceable, and then joyfully learning that John Wright has a successor after all. You have seen me buy and test three other MI designs (Nagaoka MP-500, Grado Statement3, Soundsmith Sussurro MkII) along with my older MC cartridges (Ortofon Kontrapunkt C and Benz Micro Ruby 3). Since those struggles have led me to owning two SME turntables and four tonearms, I am now torturing myself with the question of whether one of those four should be home to a dedicated mono cartridge. Remember, I only have one ear and cannot hear stereo at the best of times. A mono cartridge for my few dozen mono recordings would be a matter of reduced surface noise and possibly some improvement in dynamics.
I can get hold of an Ortofon Cadenza Mono (two voice coils so not true mono) for about 1600CDN, and a Miyajima Zero for 3450CDN. So the question is this: am I mad to even think about it? Money is not what it once was before I retired. There is no opportunity to go and hear these before purchase, without spending much more than purchase price on travel.
Shall I "make do" with my rather good stereo carts for my mono LPs or is there something better waiting for me when I get out those Parlophone Beatles LPs?
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@intactaudio in your experience would you say modern profiles play mono better? |
Ortofon give the tip diameters of their mono cartridges with spherical tips as either 18μm, 25μm and 65μm for late mono, early mono and 78s respectively. I presume mil is US for thousandth of an inch. That would be called thou’ in the UK and possibly the rest of Europe where they’ve heard of an inch but mil is rather confusingly used for millimetres here. Of the stereo cartridges I’ve used on mono disks the Proteus Ogura PA wasn’t very happy, the microridge of a Dynavector 17D3 nearly as bad but the Replicant 100 and Gyger S felt at home, barring the slight loss from the mono button, on both late and early mono LPs. The 18μm spherical on my Decca with a £350 phono stage had the replicant on my stereo SPU Royal N with an £8k phonostage beaten on late monos but was hopeless on early ones. |
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